The Republican journal., 1899-02-16

on this road they Will be allowed no lug
gage but one valise, one hat and one game
cock.
The cars are of the first, second and
third classes. Those of the first class are
cane seated, tolerably clean, and have few
passengers but women. Nearly all the
men ride in the dinghy upholstered
second class cars, preferring to pay half
the price for equal discomfort, though
their wives and daughters be riding
'primera classe' on the same train. The
third class cars, at one-third the first
class fare, are mere freight or cattle cars,
furnished with rude benches: and to them
are relocated the laborers and colored
people These were the 'ron- cads, ="
bristlng with guns, which during the
late war We're filed with Spanish soldiers
and attached to every train as a guard
against insurgent raids. There are no
smoking compartments in the Cuban
railway service, because here, as in all
Spanish countries, men smoke everywhere
at the table, in the parlor, the theatre
With never thought of the lady along
side,-it being taken for granted that
nobody can pc sibly object to the odor of
good tobacco, any more than to air, sun
shine and the fragrance of flowers.
instead of the omnipresent news boys of
the North, lottery ticket vendors board
the train at every Cuban station, and
ragged peddla1s, male and female, scurry
through the cars, or imp0rtune you at the
windows, offering baskets of cocoanuts,
mangoes and bananas, dirty looking bread,
the spongy white cheese of the country,
brown slabs of guava- jelly, song birds in
wicker cages, lunches of quail and plover,
struggling, and boxes of living glow
worms. The last named articles of com
merce find ready sale among curiosity
seeking foreigners Each tiny, eight
ming bug carries a lantern under his tail,
SO brightly shining that two or three
of them illumne the darkness better than
table drought of the guava- jelly that used
to circulate by hundreds of tons in Cuba,
because the trees which yielded such
enormous quantities of guavas were
mostly destroyed by one army or the
other. The favorite compete, with whose
agreeable taste and benificent qualities
everybody is familiar, usually comes in
bars, like brown soap, OF sealed in cans.
In all first class hotels and private houses
throughout the West indies it figures
prominently at breakfast and dinner,
served with qaeso, {cheese), at dessert;
and the traveller soon considers it indis-
pensible.
Now and then the trains stop to ''wat-
err at some waysde elevated cistern
and always close by its so-ealled lunch
room, wherein unkempt negresses dispense
coffee, Catalina wine and cana rum, to-
gether with unguessable connndrums in
stews and dulcies. The traveller who has
not brought along a well-filled lunch
basket, finds himself worse off than the
foolish virgins whose lamps went out, for
he stands chance of semi starvation in
the long journey between Cienfuegoes and
Matanzas. But he had better endure
the pangs of hunger than imbibe his
''peck of dirt prematurely in the mis-
cradle but high priced food, handled by
the unwashed, sampled by prowling dogs
and naked babies, and literally peppered
with flea laden dust Atevery station the
scene is the same-idle habitans, doing the
heavy standing around business in rags
and wretchedness; lean ours searching
hungrily for crumbs and disputing each
''find'' with juvenile gamin arily attired
in dirty skins; and women, clad only in
one scant garment, sitting comfortably in
that polite society might demand more
clothing.
You pass through many picturesque
hamlets, all bearing the unmistakable
ear marks of antiquity and old Spain.
Each has its white washed church, with
breast high facing of piledup stones,
showing that it was turned into fort dur
ing the war; and all the warehouses and
depots along the line are protected by
similar walls or covered with corrugated
tin Or iron, with loop-holes for guns.
Every village has its posada. which might
have sat to General Lew Wallace for a
picture of the one described in Ben Hur.
In front of the posadas groups of natives
are putting lazily at cigarettes, and rows
of shaggy ponies are tied with their noses
| close to the open doors.
People, ponies, houses, are all stained
and discolored with the red soil, like our
Western Indians arrayed in their war
paint. This pigment, constantly blowing
in pillows of fine dust, penetrates every
thing, and each seperate grain OF dust car
ries with it an exceedingly active flea
apparently the only industrious denizens
of this land of manana. Hardly wheel
ed vehicle is to be seen in long day s
journey, for the country roads OF Cuba
are fit only for equestrains, and not fo1