sket; the
sidewalks averaged from two to three and a half feet in width, and the
gutters were open drains, broken here and there by holes and pockets
filled with decaying garbage and dirty, foul-smelling water. Piles of
mango-skins, ashes, old bones, filthy rags, dung, and kitchen refuse of
all sorts lay here and there on the broken and neglected pavements,
poisoning the air with foul exhalations and affording sustenance to
hundreds of buzzards and myriads of flies; little rills of foul,
discolored water trickled into the open gutters at intervals from the
kitchens and cesspools of the adjoining houses; every hole and crevice
in the uneven pavement was filled with rotting organic matter washed
down from the higher levels by the frequent rains, and when the
sea-breeze died away at night the whole atmosphere of the city seemed to
be pervaded by a sickly, indescribable odor of corruption and decay. I
had expected, as a matter of course, to find Santiago in bad sanitary
condition, but I must confess that I felt a little sinking of the heart
when I first breathed that polluted air and realized that for me there
was no return to the ship and that I must henceforth eat, work, and
sleep in that fever-breeding environment. In a long and tolerably varied
experience in Russia, the Caucasus, Asia Minor, and European Turkey, I
have never seen streets so filthy as in some parts of this Cuban city,
nor have I ever encountered such a variety of abominable stenches as I
met with in the course of my short walk from the steamer to the
Anglo-American Club.

The houses and shops which stood along these narrow, dirty streets were
generally one story in height, with red-tiled roofs, high, blank walls
of stuccoed or plastered brick covered with a calcimine wash of pale
blue or dirty yellow, large, heavy plank doors, and equally large,
unglazed windows protected by prison gratings of iron bars and closed
with tight inner shutters. There were no trees in the streets,--at
least, in the business part of the city,--no yards in front of the
houses, no shop-windows for the display of goods, and no windows of
glass even in the best private houses. I cannot remember to have seen a
pane of window-glass in this part of Cuba. The windows of both shops and
houses were mere rectangular openings in the wall, six feet by ten or
twelve feet in size, filled with heavy iron gratings or protected by
ornamental metal scrollwork embedded all around in the solid mas