When the war began the population of Cuba was a little more than one-third black; now the proportion is officially reckoned as 525,684 colored, against 1,631,600 white.  In 1898 two Negroes were serving as secretaries in the Autonomist Cabinet.  The last regiment that Blanco formed was of Negro volunteers, to whom he paid—­or, rather, promised to pay, which is quite another matter, considering Blanco’s habit—­the unusual hire of $20 a month, showing his appreciation of the colored man as a soldier.  If General Weyler evinced any partiality in Cuba, it was for the black Creole.  During the ten years’ war, his cavalry escort was composed entirely of colored men.  Throughout his latest reign in the island he kept black soldiers constantly on guard at the gates of the government palace.  While the illustrated papers of Spain were caricaturing:  the insurgents as coal-black demons with horns and forked toe nails, burning canefields and butchering innocent Spaniards, the Spanish General chose them for his bodyguards.

[Illustration:  CUBAN WOMAN CAVALRY.]

ONE OF THE GREATEST GENERALS.

One of the greatest Generals of the day, considering the environment, was Antonio Maceo, the Cuban mulatto hero, who, for two years, kept the Spanish army at bay or led them a lively quickstep through the western provinces to the very gates of Havana.  As swift on the march as Sheridan or Stonewall Jackson, as wary and prudent as Grant himself, he had inspirations of military genius whenever a crisis arose.  It is not generally known that Martinez Campos, who owed his final defeat at Colisea to Maceo, was a second cousin of this black man.  Maceo’s mother, whose family name was Grinan, came from the town of Mayari where all the people have Indian blood in their veins.  Col.  Martinez del Campos, father of General Martinez Campos, was once Military Governor of Mayari.  While there he loved a beautiful girl of Indian and Negro blood, who belonged to the Grinan family, and was first cousin to Maceo’s mother.  Martinez Campos, Jr., the future General and child of the Indian girl was born in Mayari.  The Governor could not marry his sweetheart, having a wife and children in Spain, but when he returned to the mother country he took the boy along.  According to Spanish law, the town in which one is baptized is recognized as his legal birthplace, so it was easy enough to legitimatize the infant Campos.  He grew up in Spain, and when sent to Cuba as Captain-General, to his everlasting credit be it said, that one of his first acts was to hunt up his mother.  Having found her, old and poor, he bought a fine house in Campo Florida, the aristocratic suburb of Havana, established her there and cared for her tenderly till she died.  The cousins, though on opposite sides of the war, befriended each other in many instances, and it is said that more than once Captain-General Campos owed his life to his unacknowledged relative.

HIS BROTHER CAPTURED.