/> thousand volunteers. But the island was seething with discontent, and

trifles grow fast under such circumstances. Twenty years before a great

rebellion had been afoot. It was settled by treaty in 1878, but Spain had

ignored the promises of the treaty and steadily heaped up fuel for the new

flame which had now burst out.



As the days and weeks went on the movement grew, many of the plantation

hands joining the insurgents until there were several thousand men in

arms. For a time these had it all their own way, raiding and plundering

the plantations of the loyalists, and vanishing into the woods and

mountains when the troops appeared.



The war to which this led was not one of the picturesque old affairs of

battles and banners, marches and campaigns. It displayed none of "the pomp

and circumstance of glorious war;" forest ambushes, sudden attacks, quick

retreats, and brisk affrays that led to nothing forming the staple of the

conflict. The patriots had no hope of triumphing over the armed and

trained troops of Spain, but they hoped to wear them out and make the war

so costly to Spain that she would in the end give up the island in

despair.



The work of the Cuban patriots was like the famous deeds of Marion and his

men in the swampy region of the Carolina coast. Two-thirds of Cuba were

uncultivated and half its area was covered with thickets and forests. In

the wet season the low-lands of the coast were turned into swamps of

sticky black mud. Underbrush filled the forests, so thick and dense as to

be almost impassable. The high bushes and thick grasses of the plains

formed a jungle which could be traversed only with the aid of the machete,

the heavy, sharp, cutlass-like blade which the Cuban uses both as tool and

sword, now cutting his way through bush and jungle, now slicing off the

head of an enemy in war.



Everywhere in the island there are woods, there are hills and mountains,

there are growths of lofty grass, affording countless recesses and refuges

for fugitives and lurking-places for ambushed foes. To retire to the "long

grass" is a Cuban phrase meaning, to gain safety from pursuit, and a

patriot force might lie unseen and unheard while an army marched by. In

brief, Cuba is a paradise for the bush-fighter, and the soldiers of Spain

were none too eager to venture into the rebel haunts, where the flame of

death might suddenly burst forth from the most innocent-looking woodland

retreat or grass-grown mead. The soldiers might search for days for a foe

who could not be found, and as for starving out the rebels, that was no

easy thing to do. There were the yam, the banana, the sweet potato, the

wild fruits of the woodland, which the fertile soil bore abundantly, while

the country-people were always ready to supply their brothers in the

field.



Such was the state of affairs in Cuba in the rebellion of 1895. For a time

the rebels gathered in small bands with none but local leaders. But the

outbreak had been fomented by agents afar, fugitives from the former war,

and early in April twenty-four of these exiles arrived from Costa Rica,

landing secretly at a point near the eastern end of the island.



Chief among the new comers was Antonio Maceo, a mulatto, who had won a

high reputation for his daring and skill in the past conflict, and who had

unbounded influence over the negro element of the rebellion. Wherever

Maceo was ready to lead, they were ready to follow to the death if he gave

the word, and he soon proved himself the most daring and successful

soldier in the war.



He did not make his way inland with safety. Spanish cavalry were

patrolling the coast to prevent landings, and Maceo and his comrades had a

brisk fight with a party of these soon after landing, he getting away with

a bullet-hole through his hat. For ten days they were in imminent danger,

now fighting, now hiding, now seeking the wild woodland fruits for food,

and so pestered by the Spanish patrols that the party was forced to break

up, only two or three remaining with Maceo. In the end these fell in with

a party of rebels, from whom they received a warm and enthusiastic

welcome.



Maceo was a rebel in grain. He was the only one of the leaders in the

former war who had refused to sign the treaty of peace. He had kept up the

fight for two months longer, and finally escaped from the country, now to

return without the load of a broken promise on his conscience.



The new leader of the rebellion soon had a large following of insurgents

at his back, and in several sharp brushes with the enemy proved that he

could more than hold his own. Other patriots soon arrived from exile,--Jose

Marti, the fomenter of the insurrection; Maximo Gomez, an able soldier;

and several more whose presence gave fresh spirit to the rebels. The

movement, which had as yet been a mere hasty outbreak, was now assuming

the dimensions of a regular war, hundreds of patriots joining the ranks of

these able leaders, until more than six thousand men were in the field.



Almost everywhere that they met their enemy they were largely outnumbered,

and they fought mostly from ambush, striking their blows when least

expected and vanishing so suddenly and by such hidden paths that pursuit

was usually idle. Much of their strength lay in their horses. No Cossacks

or cowboys could surpass them as riders, in which art they were far

superior to the Spanish cavalry. Many stories are told of women who rode

in their ranks and wielded the machete as boldly and skillfully as the

men, and in this there is doubtless much truth. Their horses were no show

animals, but a sore-backed, sorry lot, fed on rushes or colla, there being

no other grain, left standing unsheltered, rain or shine, but as tough and

tireless beasts as our own bronchos, and ever ready to second their riders

in mad dashes on the foe.



The favorite mode of fighting practised by the insurgents was to surprise

the enemy by a sharp skirmish fire, their sharp-shooters seeking to pick

off the officers. Then, if there was a fair opportunity, they would dash

from their covert in a wild cavalry charge, machete in hand, and yelling

like so many demons, and seek to make havoc in the ranks of the foe. This

was the kind of fighting in which Maceo excelled.



Through 1895 the war went on with endless skirmishes and only one affair

that could be called a battle. In this Maceo was the insurgent leader,

while Martinez Campos, governor-general of Cuba, a man looked upon as the

ablest general of Spain, led the Spanish troops. Maceo had caused great

annoyance by attacks on train-loads of food for the fortified town of

Bayamo, and Campos determined to drive him from the field. Several columns

of Spanish troops were set in motion upon him from different quarters, one

of these, fifteen hundred strong, led by Campos himself. On the 13th of

July the two armies met, Maceo, with nearly three thousand men, being

posted on a stock-farm several miles from Bayamo.



The fight began with a sharp attack on the Spaniards, intended to strike

the division under Campos; but by an error it fell upon the advance guard,

led by General Santocildes, which was saluted by a brisk fire from the

wooded hill-sides. Santocildes fell dead, and a bullet tore the heel from

the governor-general's boot.



Maceo, surmising from the confusion in the Spanish ranks that some

important officer had fallen, now launched his horsemen upon them in a

vigorous machete charge. Though Campos succeeded in repelling them, he

felt himself in a critical situation, and hastily drew up his whole force

into a hollow square, with the wagons and the dead horses and mules for

breastworks. Around this strong formation the Cubans raged for several

hours, only the skill of Campos saving his men from a disastrous rout. An

assault was made on the rear guard early in the affray, Maceo hoping to

capture the ammunition train. But its defenders held their ground

vigorously, and fought their way to the main column, where they aided to

form the square. Finally the Spaniards succeeded in reaching Bayamo,

pursued by the Cubans and having lost heavily in the fight. They were

saved from utter destruction by Maceo's lack of artillery, and Campos was

very careful afterwards not to venture near this daring leader without a

powerful force.



Maximo Gomez, one of the principal leaders in the earlier war, had now

been appointed commander-in-chief of the Cuban forces, with Antonio Maceo

as his lieutenant-general. He had made his way westward into the province

of Santa Clara, and in November Maceo left the eastern province of

Santiago de Cuba to join him. In his way lay the trocha, the famous device

of the Spaniards to prevent the free movement of the Cuban forces. It may

be of interest to describe this new idea in warfare, devised by the

Spaniards to check the free movement of their rebel foes.



The word trocha means trench, but the Spanish trochas were military lines

cut through the woods and across the island from side to side, and

defended by barbed-wire fences, while the felled trees were piled along

both sides of the roadway, making a difficult breastwork of jagged roots

and branches. At intervals of a quarter-mile or more along this

well-guarded avenue were forts, each with a garrison of about one hundred

men, it needing about fifteen thousand to defend the whole line of the

trocha from sea to sea.



Such was the elaborate device adopted by Campos, and by Weyler after him,

to check the Cuban movements. We need only say here that, despite its cost

and the number of men it tied up on guard duty, the trocha failed to

restrain the alert islanders. Gomez had crossed it in his movement

westward, and Maceo now followed with equal readiness. He made a feint of

an attack in force on one part of the line, and when the Spaniards had

concentrated to defend this point, he crossed at an unprotected spot,

without firing a shot or losing a man.



Westward still went the Cubans, heedless of trochas and Spaniards. From

Santa Clara they entered Matanzas province, and from this made their way

into the province of Havana, bringing the war almost to the gates of the

capital. Spain had now sent more than one hundred thousand troops across

the ocean, though many of these were in the hospitals. As for the Cubans,

the island had now risen almost from end to end, and their force was

estimated at from thirty to fifty thousand men. It was no longer a rebel

outbreak that Spain had to deal with, it was a national war.



By the end of the year the Cubans were firmly fixed in Havana province,

many negro field-hands and Cuban youths having joined their ranks. They

fought not only against the Spaniards, but against the bandits also, of

whom there were many abroad plundering from both sides alike. These were

hanged by the patriots whenever captured. Maceo was the active fighter of

the force, Gomez being occupied in burning sugar-cane fields and

destroying railroads, so as to deprive Spain of the sinews of war.



In January, 1896, a new movement westward was made, Maceo leading his men

into the province of Pinar del Rio, which occupies the western end of the

island. Here was the great tobacco district, one into which insurrection

had never before made its way. Within a year rebellion had covered the

island from end to end, the Spaniards being secure nowhere but within the

cities, while the insurgents moved wherever they chose in the country. The

sky around the capital was heavy with smoke by day and lurid with the

flames of burning fields at night, showing that Gomez was busy with his

work of destruction, burning the crops of every planter who sought to

grind his cane.



Let us now follow the daring mulatto leader through the remainder of his

career. General Weyler had now succeeded Campos, and began his official

life with the boast that he would soon clear the provinces near Havana of

rebels in arms. But he was hardly in the governor's chair when Maceo was

back from the west and swooping down on the city of Jaruco, which he

looted and burned.



Weyler sent troops into Pinar del Rio, where they found no one to oppose

them, and he was soon able to inform the world by a proclamation that this

province was pacified. But the ink was barely dry upon it when Maceo,

having burnt the port of Batabano, on the southern coast, was back in the

"pacified" province, where he made his head-quarters in the mountains and

defied all the power of Spain.



Instead of seeking him here, Weyler now attempted to confine him by

building a new trocha, cutting off that end of the island. This took two

months to complete, during which Maceo continued his work almost

unopposed, destroying the tobacco of loyalists, defeating every force sent

against him, and leaving to Spain only four fortified cities in the

southern part of the province.



Not until autumn opened did Weyler take the field, marching into Pinar del

Rio at the head of thirty thousand men, confident now of putting an end to

the work of his persistent foe, whom he felt sure he had hemmed in with

his trocha. Between the two forces, Spanish and Cuban, the province was

sadly harried, and became so incapable of supporting a large force that

Maceo was obliged to dismiss the most of his men.



Leaving the slender remnant under the control of one of his lieutenants,

he once more passed the trocha, this time rowing round its end in a boat

and landing in Havana province. He had sent orders in advance for a

concentration of the Cuban forces in this region, that he might give

Weyler a new employment.



The daring partisan leader was near the end of his career, brought to his

death by the work of a traitor, as was widely believed. While waiting for

the gathering of the forces, he, with the few men with him, was fired on

from a Spanish ambush, and fell, mortally wounded.



Thus died the most dashing soldier that the Cuban rebellion called into

the field. Dr. Zertucha, of his staff, was charged with treachery in

leading him into this ambush, though that is by no means proved. Maceo was

one of nine brothers, all soldiers, and all of whom had now died in the

great struggle for Cuban independence. His body was recovered from the

enemy after a desperate fight; his valiant spirit was lost to the cause.

Yet his work had not been without avail, and the country for which he had

fought so bravely was left by him on the highroad to liberty.