circle of pacificos doing no work, and for the most part starving and
diseased, and outside, in the plains and mountains, are the insurgents.
No one knows just where any one band of them is to-day or where it may
be to-morrow. Sometimes they come up to the very walls of the fort,
lasso a bunch of cattle and ride off again, and the next morning their
presence may be detected ten miles away, where they are setting fire to
a cane field or a sugar plantation.

[Illustration: Guerrillas With Captured Pacificos]

This is the situation, so far as the inhabitants are concerned. The
physical appearance of the country since the war began has changed
greatly. In the days of peace Cuba was one of the most beautiful
islands in the tropics, perhaps in the world. Its skies hang low and
are brilliantly beautiful, with great expanses of blue, and in the
early morning and before sunset, they are lighted with wonderful clouds
of pink and saffron, as brilliant and as unreal as the fairy's grotto
in a pantomime. There are great wind-swept prairies of high grass or
tall sugar cane, and on the sea coast mountains of a light green, like
the green of corroded copper, changing to a darker shade near the base,
where they are covered with forests of palms.

Throughout the extent of the island run many little streams, sometimes
between high banks of rock, covered with moss and magnificent fern,
with great pools of clear, deep water at the base of high waterfalls,
and in those places where the stream cuts its way through the level
plains double rows of the royal palm mark its course. The royal palm is
the characteristic feature of the landscape in Cuba. It is the most
beautiful of all palms, and possibly the most beautiful of all trees.
The cocoanut palm, as one sees it in Egypt, picturesque as it is, has a