The Zone Of Fire In Cuba

It can be truthf ully saicl of the whole province of Matanzas that it resembles nothing so much as a great ash heap. And the same is trae of the three other western provinees, says the líenew of Reviews. But there was a radius of five miles around the city of Matanzas that had not been destroyed in January. Tliis has been pointed out as the zone of cultivation, where some day, some remóte mañana, the land would be allotted to the pacíficos, and in Mareh tlie destruction of ail this property, and even the growing erops, was decreed by Gen. Molinas, the military governor. The last time I stood on the stimmit of Montserrat there were three great fires burning to the right iiiid to the left of me, and before me. Everything was on fire except the sea, wliieh, cannot be made to burn, even by royal cíecree. And for a week Matanzas, usually so bright and clear, was as smoky and sooty as Birmingham. Here in Matanzas, as elsewhere at every station of reconcentration, I noticed that the people are without any organization whatever and they seem to be lacking absolutely in the AngloSaxon faculty of combination, by which they might possibly makc their wants and their grievances heard. They have no committees and noselectmen. Each family starves alone. Not but that they are very kindly and charitable the one to the other. They are helpful to one another to a surprising degree, but they do not organize for selfpreservation and do not seem to nnderstand the suggestion when it is made to them. I found them everywhere in the same state, completely stupefied by the sufTerings and the misery they had nndergone and the prospect of im pending famine, starvation and plague which confronts thein.