A correspondent in Cuba gives an interesting account of a case that came under his notice among the reconcentrados in the town of Guadaloupe.  It is substantially as follows: 

In all misery-ridden Cuba there is no town in which the reign of misery is so absolute as in Guadaloupe.  Even the situation of this place might be said to be in “the valley of the shadow of death.”  It is not upon the earth’s surface, but far below, in a broad, deep hole.  The all-surrounding hills are not green, but black.  For these up-sloping fields, upon which many a rich tobacco crop has been raised, lie now under blackening ashes—­the work of insurgent torches.  In this low-lying town 3,000 reconcentrados are naked, shelterless and starving.  That aid has not come to them till now is because of the ingratitude and treachery of two of their own number.

As the two guilty ones have just paid the penalty of their crime, the Red Cross Society will probably have a relief corps in Guadaloupe by the time this letter is printed.

The tragedy of Guadaloupe, to the denouement of which I was an eyewitness, shows that the insurgents have learned the art of butchery as taught by the Spanish, and that a reconcentrado will sometimes betray the Samaritan who helps him.  A faithful mule carried me into Guadaloupe at 2 o’clock in the afternoon, the siesta hour.  I had come from the coast many miles away, over the hills.  As I rode into the town, I said to the mule:  “The next artist who is given an order to illustrate Dante’s ‘Inferno’ ought to come here.  He could draw from life, pictures more infernal than a mere human mind could conceive.”

Reconcentrados lay everywhere under the broiling sun.  The mule picked his way between human heaps that looked like so many little mounds of rags.  Skeleton legs and arms protruded from out the heaps.  Soft moans of mothers and the wailing of little children gave evidence of so many living deaths.

One kind-hearted Spaniard.

I presented my credentials to the commandante.  He was the most genial Spanish official I had met between Havana and Guadaloupe.  When he smiled, his face was all kindness.  When he spoke of the reconcentrados, tears welled from his eyes.  Yet around his mouth and chin were the cruel lines of a nature as stern as it was commiserative.  He told me that the hospital was full, always full; there was room in its wards for only 200 patients, and only one doctor for all.  All who entered that place of sickness came out of it, not cured, but dead.  Three thousand human beings, mostly women and children, had passed away in that town in three months.  Nearly all had died of starvation and exposure.  When the cemetery was full, they began burying in the still burning tobacco fields on the hillsides.

But it was the siesta hour.  The commandante excused himself, saying he would rest awhile and advised me to do the same.