red in arms at Ybarra, in the province of
Matanzas. Other small bands were soon heard of elsewhere in the island. A
trifle this seemed, in view of the fact that Cuba was guarded by twenty
thousand Spanish troops and had on its military rolls the names of sixty
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