The daily morning journal and courier., 1899-10-09

road thereto traVerses series of vale
 and pockets" everywhere filled witt
 sugar-cane, splendid royal palms anC
 blooming gardens. On every side thu
 foot hills rise steeply, their slopes cul
 tivated to the summit, This was once
 a famous producing region, and
 may be again when prosperity is re-
 stored, From the upper heights entran'
 ding views are unfolded, worth cross
 ing the globe to see.
 Another delightful little trip is to Sar
 Luis, the terminus of the railway that
 starts from the center of Santiago city
 and runs forty miles inland. San Luis
 IS typical interior town of southern
 Cuba, with population of perhaps fif-
 teen hundred, its stony mule-trails by
 courtesy called streets, it's palm-shaded
 plaza and tumble-down casts, as quaint
 as quaint can be. Besides these rail-
 way journeys there are little jaunts to
 be made on horseback or en volante
 and excursions by boat around the bay.
 One Of the adjacent hills, greener than
 the rest with gruesome suggestions of
 eXuberant vegetation, and faced on it's
 Water-side with high adobe walls, is
 the over-crowded Campo Santo. It
 needs no crosses or funeral urns to in-
 dicate the character of that enclosure,
 for the vultures that continually hover
 above it tell unmistakably of bursting
 vaults and shallow, rented graves from
 Which tenants of few months are
 evicted to make room for others. Few
 of our soldiers are buried there, for
 most of those who died in hospitals 1 were put into a new cemetery, laid out
 about year ago near the city limits.
 You may hire a boatman at the
 wharves of Santiago to row you to Si-
 boney for dollar that place of doleful
 memory, where the great yellow fever
 camp was situated; or you may tra-
 verse the sixteen miles by railway. Many of our brave boys died there, but far greater number survived the fe- yer and live to tell the tale. Braver
 than all others were the devoted band
 of nurses, who without glory or hope
 of earthly reward, defied death in it's l most dreadful form to save the lives of others. A number of these martyrs lie in the adjacent battle-ground in un- marked graves forgotten of man; but be sure that Heaven remembers
 Rowing straight across Santiago bay and up a winding creek, you may pene- trate the mangrove bushes and hear the curious sound of oysters shutting their shells alarmed at your approach. On the way you are shown the rotting timbers of an old hulk lying far below the surface of the clear water, all that is left of one of the armadas' galleons, come to grief three centuries ago. Far ther up the creek you land on a sandy beech and follow a path bordered with the sharp. pinksh-green bayonets of the wild pineapple, to famous cocoa- nut plantation. If the owner of the grove is at bome-a saddle-hued, bare footed gentleman, attired in shirt and drawers of native cotton, topped with an enormous hat of coarse straw fringed around the edges-he will give you cordial welcome, seconded by his wife and bakers dozen of children, the latter mostly naked and shy as the birds of the forest. Toss real to one of the half-nude negroes lounging about and he will shin up a cocoa tree with the agility of a Hazard, carrying his machete in his teeth, and toss you down some cocoanuts. The proprietor, with his machete, will whack the tops off the nuts, leaving a hole about an inch across in the shell of each. Inside that great ivory cup there is full pint of cool, sweet delicious water, distilled by nature in the sun and breeze-and of course you are thirsty after jaunt in the tropics. So tilt back your head, el- evate the nut to the proper angle and let the refreshing stream flow gently down your throat
 A few miles east of Santiago is the noble harbor of Guantanamo, recently brought into prominence by our gallant marines. Though one of the most ex- tensive bays on the coast of Cuba, it is useless for commercial purposes, because choked with alluvium from the entering streams. The name, Wan-tahn- ah-mo, is Indi- an, and one of the few reminders left in the island of the mild and hosptable a aborigines whom the Spaniards long ago exterminated. The town of Guam ttanamo, with population of seven or eight thousand, is situated fifteen miles | from the bay and connected by rail- way. Sugar and coffee is grown in the 1 been exported from the neighboring | forests to the United States. Not far | away is the place where our troops | were landed on Cuban soil, and the l 1reary hills up which the Rough Riders stormed in the face of Spanish guns. Human life was held so cheap in those times when the young and strong and | died with cheer on their ips. Over there are the trenches | where our hungry soldiers lay in the ain, and where more precious lives were yielded up because somebody olundered than were legitimately taken )y the enemy's bullets; and somewhere here two thousand mothers boys were buried.
 Santa Cruz del Sur is an interesting own, although it has not figured much n history. It Is situated immediately Il front of the sea, so close that the louses are sometimes touched by the waves when the tide is high. There is ut one street, extending nearly two niles east and west, the populat ton be- ng about two thousand and the ground 'ehind the houses swanpy and impas- able. One would think 1t a fine breed ng-place for malarial levers, but, trange to say, there was very little icliness in the locality until late in he war, when the Spaniards estab- shed a camp here. Then yellow fever anne for the first time and developed