to attack him.  A shot from the farthest sentry causes little or no excitement in Gomez’s camp.  The report throws the Spanish column into fears of attack or ambush, and it moves forward very slowly and carefully.  Two pickets at such a time have been known to hold 2,000 men at bay for a whole day.  If the column presses on, and General Gomez hears a shot from a sentinel near by, he will rise leisurely from his hammock and give orders to prepare to move camp.  He has had so many experiences of this kind that not until he hears the volley-shooting of the oncoming Spaniards will he call for his horse, give the word to march, and disappear, followed by his entire force, into the tropical underbrush, which closes like curtain behind him, leaving the Spaniards to discover a deserted camp, without the slightest trace of the path taken by its recent occupants.

“Sometimes Gomez will move only a mile or two.  The Spaniards do not usually give chase.  If they do, Gomez takes a keen delight in leading them in a circle.  If he can throw them off by nightfall, he goes to sleep in his camp of the morning, happier than if he had won a battle.  The Spaniards learn nothing through such experiences.  Gomez varies the game occasionally by marching directly towards the rear of the foe, and there, reinforced by other insurgent bands of the neighborhood, falling upon the column and punishing it severely.  While his immediate force is but a handful, the General can call to his aid, in a short time, nearly 6,000 men.”

A colored commander.

As soon as the rebellion had assumed such proportions as to make it possible to arrange a regular military organization among the insurgents, Antonio Maceo was made the second in command, under General Gomez, with the title of Lieutenant General.  He had risen from the ranks to the position of Major General in the Ten Years’ war, where, notwithstanding his colored blood, he had shown unusual ability as a leader of men.  Sons of the first families of Cuba were proud to enlist under his banner, and to recognize him as their superior officer.  Space is devoted in another part of this volume to an account of the treacherous manner of his death.

The following letter, written by him to General Weyler, soon after the arrival of the latter named in Cuba, shows that he could fight with his pen as well as with his sword: 

Republic of Cuba, Invading Army.  Second Corps, Cayajabos, Feb. 27, 1896.

General Valeriano Weyler, Havana: 

In spite of all that the press has published in regard to you, I have never been willing to give it belief and to base my judgment of your conduct on its statements; such an accumulation of atrocities, so many crimes repugnant and dishonoring to any man of honor, I thought it impossible for a soldier holding your high rank to commit.

These accusations seemed to me rather to be made in bad faith, or to be the utterances of personal enmity, and I expected that jon would take care to give the lie in due form to your detractors, rising to the height required of a gentleman, and saving yourself from any imputation of that kind, by merely adopting in the treatment of the wounded and prisoners of war, the generous course that has been pursued from the beginning by the revolutionists towards the Spanish wounded and prisoners.