o an ambush and
killed, it is believed, through the treachery of his staff physician.
Eight brothers of Maceo had previously given their lives for Cuban
freedom.

At the close of 1896, the island was desolate to an extreme perhaps
unprecedented in modern times. The country was laid waste and the
cities were starving. Under the pretext of protecting them, Weyler
gathered the non-combatants into towns and stockades, and it is
authoritatively stated that 200,000 men, women, and children of the
"reconcentrados," as they were called, died of disease and starvation.
The insurgents remained masters of the island except along the coasts.
The only important incident of actual warfare was the capture of
Victoria de las Tunas, in Santiago province, by General Garcia at the
head of 3,000 men, after three days' fighting. In this battle the
Spanish commander lost his life and forty per cent. of his troops were
killed or wounded; the rest surrendered to Garcia, and the rebels
secured by their victory 1,000 rifles, 1,000,000 rounds of ammunition,
and two Krupp guns.

In the spring of 1898 the United States intervened. The story of our war
with Spain for Cuba's freedom is elsewhere related.

[Illustration: CLARA BARTON.

President of the American Red Cross Society.]

Spain has paid dearly for her supremacy in Cuba during the last third of
the nineteenth century. Notwithstanding the fact that the revenue from
Cuba for several years prior to the Ten Years' War of 1868-78 amounted
to $26,000,000 annually--about $18 for every man, woman, and child in
the island--$20,000,000 of it was absorbed in Spain's official circles
at Havana, and "the other $6,000,000 that the Spanish government
received," says one historian, "was hardly enough to pay transportation
rates on the help that the mother country had to send to her army of
occupation." Consequently, despite this enormous tax, a heavy debt
accumulated on account of the island, even before the Ten Years' War
began.

FEARFUL COST OF THE WAR.

At the close of the Ten Years' War (1878) Spain had laid upon the island
a public debt of $200,000,000, and required her to raise $39,000,000 of
revenue annually, an average at that time of nearly $30 per inhabitant.
But Spain's own debt had, also, increased to nearly $2,000,000,000, and
during this Ten Years' War she had sent 200,000 soldiers and her
favorite commanders to the island, only about 50,000 of whom ever
returned. According to our C