island, from Jucaro on the south to Moron on the north.

Before I came to Cuba this time I had read in our newspapers about the
Spanish trocha without knowing just what a trocha was. I imagined it to
be a rampart of earth and fallen trees, topped with barbed wire; a
Rubicon that no one was allowed to pass, but which the insurgents
apparently crossed at will with the ease of little girls leaping over a
flying skipping rope. In reality it seems to be a much more important
piece of engineering than is generally supposed, and one which, when
completed, may prove an absolute barrier to the progress of large
bodies of troops unless they are supplied with artillery.

I saw twenty-five of its fifty miles, and the engineers in charge told
me that I was the first American, or foreigner of any nationality, who
had been allowed to visit it and make drawings and photographs of it.
Why they allowed me to see it I do not know, nor can I imagine either
why they should have objected to my doing so. There is no great mystery
about it.

Indeed, what impressed me most concerning it was the fact that every
bit of material used in constructing this backbone of the Spanish
defence, this strategic point of all their operations, and their chief
hope of success against the revolutionists, was furnished by their
despised and hated enemies in the United States. Every sheet of armor
plate, every corrugated zinc roof, every roll of barbed wire, every
plank, beam, rafter and girder, even the nails that hold the planks
together, the forts themselves, shipped in sections, which are numbered
in readiness for setting up, the ties for the military railroad which
clings to the trocha from one sea to the other--all of these have been
supplied by manufacturers in the United States.