to embrace all of the island to which the power of the Spanish arms was
able to reach by occupation or by military operations. The peasantry,
including all dwelling in the open agricultural interior, were driven
into the garrison towns or isolated places held by the troops.

The raising and movement of provisions of all kinds were interdicted.
The fields were laid waste, dwellings unroofed and fired, mills
destroyed, and, in short, everything that could desolate the land and
render it unfit for human habitation or support was commanded by one or
the other of the contending parties and executed by all the powers at
their disposal.

By the time the present Administration took office, a year ago,
reconcentration (so called) had been made effective over the better part
of the four central and western provinces--Santa Clara, Matanzas,
Havana, and Pinar del Rio.

The agricultural population to the estimated number of 300,000 or more
was herded within the towns and their immediate vicinage, deprived of
the means of support, rendered destitute of shelter, left poorly clad,
and exposed to the most unsanitary conditions. As the scarcity of food
increased with the devastation of the depopulated areas of production,
destitution and want became misery and starvation. Month by month the
death rate increased in an alarming ratio. By March, 1897, according to
conservative estimates from official Spanish sources, the mortality
among the reconcentrados from starvation and the diseases thereto
incident exceeded 50 per cent of their total number.

No practical relief was accorded to the destitute. The overburdened
towns, already suffering from the general dearth, could give no aid.