The daily morning journal and courier. [volume] (New Haven, Conn.) 1894-1907, 1899-03-10

| "'hi 'ii1iI iluoDdiuS anu lc,lllCio IVA go
sake of protection, fearing nothing SO
much as the innumerable crimes com
mltted upon their sex at home, and hun
dreds of babies We're born in camp and
on battle-fields While misrule pre-
| vailed throughout the island, soldiers
| and highWaymen infeSting all the coun-
try roads, looting plantations and per-
| petrating all manner of atrocities upon
the defenseless, and no woman was safe
whatever her dignity and social stand
| ing. There We're some terrible cases OF
delicate, high-bred ladies transformed
| by their wrongs into avenging fur1es,
who afterwards fought shoulder to
shoulder with the men, led daring raids
and applied the torch in thousand
places. Many Of them now sleep in UNI
marked graves on desolate skirmish
| fields, and others died far sadder deaths,
of Imprisonment, disease or starvation.
| saw her in Los Fossos, Havana's re-
concentrate pen of nameless horrors.
She was young, probably about twenty,
and must have been exceedingly beauti-
| full short time before but her emacia-
ted face already wore the strange ma
| jesty of death, and only slight t1utter-
! ing Of the breast showed that life yet
fingered. Lying all around were what
| looked like heaps of rags, hundreds OF
| them-each human being, young or
old, living or dead. Such a sight! All
We're victims of starvation. Bones APP
peared to be pricking through the skin;
| deep sores covered them; feet and limbs
We're swollen out of all resemblance OF
human members, puffed like bags and
cracked in places with water oozing out
-scurvy and dropsy from long-contin-
ued hunger the blood having actually
turned to water. Amid such surround
ings lay this girl who had manlfestly
been delicately bred, having been picked
up unconscious in the street the day be-
fore and carried to Los Fossos by the
Spanish police. While I stood beside
her, wondering where were her friends,
where the loving hands that once ca
ressed that wealth of shining hair, the
breast ceased to move and kindly death
released the suffering soul. Persistent
inquiry revealed glimpse of her histo-
ry. She was the daughter of a well-to-
do planter in the adjoining province. be-
trothed to a captain in the insurgent
army. When father, brother and lover
We're away in the field troop of Span
ish soldiers arrived one day, burned the
house. murdered the mother and
younger children and kept this girl a
prisoner at their mercy. In the night
she strangled the brutal lieutenant who
held her in his tent, managed to elude
the guard by creeping on her hands and
knees through the underbrush, and thus
escaped. Hiding by day and wandering
by night, hopeless, hungry, half-craZed
by grief and fear, she finally reached
Havana and the merciful end of grave
in the reconcentrado corner of the great
cemetery where our Maine" boys lie,
amid the gruesome collection of uncof-
fined bones of more than thirty thou
sand other unfortunates.
Nearly all the officers under Gomez
had their wives with them in the field,
because they dared not leave them at
home. Antonio Maceo also had more
than hundred females in his regiment
not coarse and shameless Amazons,
who chose the wild life for love of ad-
venture, but mostly honest wives and
mothers. They dressed in masculine at
tire, carried Mauser rifles and machetes
marched with the men, endured all the
hardships of camp and field and made
as intrepid and accomplishing soldiers
as any. Among many well authentica-
ted stories space forbids the telling of
but two or three. One of the most ro-
mantle incidents of the war was mar
riage ceremony performed at dawn in
the mountains of Puerto Principe. The
groom was Captain Robau, handsome,
we'll educated and once wealthy young
planter; the bride the runaway daugh-
ter of one of his tenants. Robau had
long loved the young lady, but as she
was in humble circumstances, the rigid
rules of Cuban otiuette kept them apart.
At the beginning of the war he recruited
a company from his own neighborhood,
composed entirely of his personal
friends, all well-bred young men.
When they started for the feld-their
each man wearing a wreath of palm
around his hat in honor of the captains
sweetheart-they rode direct to the girls
house and saluted her as she stood on
the balcony with her mother. Robau
went inside and asked that he might
marry her at once and take her with
him, fearing that some evil might befall
her in his absence. The parents refused
and he rode away broken hearted.
Two days later, when the company had
gone many miles, the girl, mounted on
horse, dashed to the captains side.
She had run away from home in order
to Join her lover. Without an hours de-
lay Robau sent two men, with an extra
horse and an empty saddle, to fetch the
nearest priest The good padre, NUT
tering Ave Marias all the way, expect
ing to be killed. arrived with his escort
just as dawn was breaking in the east.
So the young people were married. Sc
nora Robau followed her husband all
through the war, and now with her lit
tie boy is at home on the Robau planta-
ton.
The women of San Juan Martinez took
no small part in the rebellion. When
the Spanish troops under Cornell We're
on their way to that city, the citizens,
men and women, met and took vote as
to what course they should pursue.
They decided to burn their town to ash
es rather than have it destroyed by
Spanish soldiers. So while the men took
all the horses and hurried to the field,
the women set their own homes on fire,
and then, with their children in their
arms, walked to Guane, twelve miles
,,t