The most important industry is the making of cigars, which gives employment to thousands of Cubans, who make up a large majority of the population, and many of whom are refugees, charged with political crimes, with a price set upon their heads.  One of the most important divisions of the Cuban Junta of the United States has its headquarters here.  Almost every Cuban in Key West gives regularly a portion of his earnings to the cause, and many cargoes of arms, ammunition and supplies have been sent to the insurgents by their brethren on this little island.  The city is unique in many respects.  It is made up of innumerable little wooden houses, without chimneys, but crowded in irregular groups.  Many of the houses have wooden shutters in place of glass windows.

On most of the streets there are no sidewalks, but people stumble over the jagged edges of coral rock.  There are a great number of public vehicles, and one can be hailed at any corner and engaged for 10 cents.  Some of these carriages are quite respectable in appearance.  They are generally double-seated affairs, which have been discarded in the north.  The horses are wrecks, and they show by their appearance that fodder is dear and that they are not half fed.

One of the sounds of Key West is the whacking of the horses which draw the carriages and the mules which move the street cars from place to place.

The street cars look as if they had been dug up from the neighborhood of the pyramids.  Ropes are used for reins, and the only substantial thing about the whole outfit is the great rawhide whip, with which the street-car driver labors incessantly.  The people, as a rule, are opposed to excessive exertion, but they make an exception in the case of labor with a whip.

Journalism, climate and dogs.

The town has one struggling newspaper, which is worthy of a better support.  It is told of the editor that he came to Key West a barefooted boy from Georgia, and worked his way up to his present eminent position of instructor in etiquette and ethics to the four hundred.

Hundreds of dogs, cats, roosters, goats, and “razorbacks” run at large through the streets, and the three former combine to make night hideous.  In the early evening the sound of negro meetings and jubilations predominates.  Then the cats begin where the shouters leave off.  Later, the dogs, sneaking and sore-eyed, and more numerous than any other species, take up the refrain.  They howl and bark and keep on howling and barking, until sleep seems impossible.  At last, when the wakeful man thinks the row is over, the roosters, the meanest, skinniest, loudest-mouthed roosters in the world, continue the serenade until death seems a welcome, especially the death of the roosters.

Negroes alone are patriotic.

There is a strange mixture of races at Key West, but the negroes are the most patriotic class.  They alone celebrate the Fourth of July and other national holidays.  While the town has its enlightened and respectable people, it also has a shoddy class, whose ignorance of the rest of the world carries them to grotesque extremes in their efforts to proclaim their greatness.