ween these fortified towns and
  villages throughout the whole of the four western provinces, except
  to a very limited extent among the hills, where the Spaniards have
  not been able to go and drive the people to the towns and burn their
  dwellings.

 [Illustration: HAVANA HARBOR.]

 [Illustration: CAPTAIN C.D. SIGSBEE.]

  I saw no house or hut in the 400 miles of railroad rides from Pinar
  del Rio Province in the west across the full width of Havana and
  Matanzas Provinces, and to Sagua La Grando on the north shore and to
  Cienfuegos on the south shore of Santa Clara, except within the
  Spanish trochas. There are no domestic animals or crops on the rich
  fields and pastures except such as are under guard in the immediate
  vicinity of the towns.

  In other words, the Spaniards hold in these four western provinces
  just what their army sits on.

  Every man, woman and child and every domestic animal, wherever their
  columns have reached, is under guard and within their so-called
  fortifications. To describe one place is to describe all.

  To repeat, it is neither peace nor war.

  It is concentration and desolation. This is the "pacified" condition
  of the four western provinces.

  All the country people in the four western provinces, about 400,000
  in number, remaining outside the fortified towns when Weyler's order
  was made, were driven into these towns, and these are the
  reconcentrados. They were the peasantry, many of them farmers, some
  land-owners, others renting lands and owning more or less stock,
  others working on estates and cultivating small patches, and even a
  small patch in that fruitful clime will support a family.

  It is but fair to say that the normal condition of these people was
  very different from that which prevails in this country. Their
  standard of comfort and prosperity was not high, measured by our
  own, but according to their standards and requirements, their
  conditions of life were satisfactory.

  They lived mostly in cabins made of palm or in wooden 