The daily morning journal and courier. [volume] (New Haven, Conn.) 1894-1907, 1899-05-04
MORO and CABANAS
CUBA'S OLDEST FORTIFICATIONS
EXPLORED WITH 4 CAMERA.
Bits of Gruesome Htstory-Whcre Mon
We're Shot, Their Bodies Burned and
Ashes Dumped Into tho Sea.
Especial Correspondence of the Journal
and Courier)

Especial Correspondence Of the Journa
and Courier)
Tulipan, Havana, April 23.--Until ;
few weeks ago, one might as reasonably
have aspired to make a walking tour OF
the moon as a visit with notebook ant
camera to the interior or Moro and Ca
banas. Even under the new American
regime 1t was equally impossible in war
time; and now nobody is admitted with
out a special pass, countersgned by
some commanding officer.
Last Sunday it was my good fortune
to be one of a party which spent the day
exploring these two oldest of SPANS
Notifications in Cuba. First came tht
long car-ride-forty minutes from oul
suburban residence to the other side OF
the city; past General Ludlow's head
quarters, and Blanco's late "Palaclo, -
and the new American post-office
swarmed with our eager countrymen.
Past the columbus Cathedral" where
the great admiral no longer sleeps, from
which waves of melody were rolling like
pillows upon a shore. Past thousands
of good Catholics, mostly women, stroll
ing leisurely to mathis, mendcants
making stock in trade of their sores and
1nfirmities; and stalwart Yankee senti-
nels patrolling the same beats where
SPANS ill-fed boy-solders YEARLY
marched to and fro. Past long lines of
gaily caparisoned donkeys, tied head to
tall with ref blue and yellow tassels at
their ears, and harness glittering with
brass; trains of heavily-aden bullock
carts, each poor patient beast with a
chain passed through his nose and head
bowed to the dust by weight of wood
upon his horns. Past men and women
strumming upon guitars in squalld
homes, or sitting idly in open doors, ap-
parently without care in the world,
while dirty children played around them
naked as the minute they were born
past all the quaint and varied street.
life of this old town, which to American
eyes is yet as oddly foreign as the re-
hottest corner of Europe.
Speaking of unclothed children re-
minds me of an order promulgated not
long ago by the government, regulating
nakedness in Havana's horse-cars and
omnibuses. Though both vehicles
charge the same amount of fare, the
bug-infested buses have come to be
considered second class" because most
generally patronized by the poorest who
can afford to ride; while those some
what higher in the social scale confine
themselves to the cars The order
above mentioned drew the lines of caste
still more closely by forbidding naked
children and men without shirts to en-
ter the cars, but not debarring them
from the 'busses Therefore it is a COM
mon thing to see man clad only in cot
ton trousers, hat and shoes, or a child
airily attired in a necklace, perched
abort in the sWaying coach, which holds
twelve by closely crowdng. Every
where in Cuba one sees children up to
five or six years of age stark naked in
the streets, often led by their parents for
promenade and in the rural districts
they perambulate3 in state of nature to
considerably later age. 1t is notcea-
BILE that the children of well-to-do fam
lilies sometimes wear socks and shoes,
but nothing else. American teachers
under the new school system find no end
of trouble with this question of clothes,
sending home all whose human form
divine" is not at least partially covered,
to the surprise and indignation of their
pal CiilS. HOW poor chill
dren in the north go bare-footed in the
summertime, even to school, the teach
ers have gently suggested to the moth
ers that the money spent for shoes
might better be put into shirts and
trousers, but so far without avail, the
shoes being considered necessary, the
shirts superfuous.
Arrived at the waters edge---a quar-
ter of a mile from the cathedral door
and within a stones toss of the new
-office-we secured one of the chick
en-coopA boats that constantly ply the
bay. They are all of the same antique
pattern, brought from southern Spain
in some previous century; and for dos
reales cada uno-(twenty cents each
person. the scarlet-capped Catalan
boatmanag reed to row us across the
intervening stretch of water to the for
tress nearest the city. Moro castle, on
the farther point, was intended only for
defense. while the larger and nearer Ca
banas served also as a prison for politi-
cal offenders. The former antidates the
latter by more thar half century, but
looks much newer, because it's walls of
pale gray couuina-the coral rock that
as ever; and the American authorities
have just completed it's renovation, out
side and in, with lavish use Of lime and
whitewash. Cabanas-its painted walls
now streaked and notified with mold
and weather-stains Is yet comparative
ly untouched, and-happily for curiosi-
ty-hunters, if not for health-all its hor-
rors remain about as the Spaniards left |
them. Its massive battlements, with |
their faded pinks and yellows, tower !
up from a deep, dry moat, I'M
scalable by man or beast and enclosing |
space enough for a good-sized town.
Having exhibited our permit to the |
sentry, we crossed the creaking draw
bridge and walked up sharply sloping,
winding road, paved with small, sharp |
stones that bruised the feet like peas in
the shoes of penitenties Up and up we
toiled, under the btoiling sun-always
within range of PORTFOLIOS and sentry
boxes, whose protruding guns might
easily rake the path of intruders; and
fancy conjured up myriad unhappy
ghosts that have passed this canine dol
0roso-homesick boy-conscripts from
Spain fighting an unwelcome cause, and
heavy hearted prisoners who never re-
turned
The view from the summit repays the
~ some cIlmD-narrOW. closely built