fastest
steam yacht made to Santa Clara province where the Cubans will meet us
and take us to Gomez. We will stay a month with him, the yacht calling
for copy and sketches once a week, and finally for us in a month. I
get all my expenses and The Journal pays me $3,000 for the month's
work. The Harper's Magazine also takes a story at six hundred dollars
and Russell will reprint Remington's sketches and my story in book
form, so I shall probably clear $4,000 in the next month or six weeks.
I was a week in getting information on the subject so I know all about
it from the men who have just been there and I want you to pay
attention to what I tell you they told me and not to listen to any
stray visitor who comes in for tea and talks without any tact or
knowledge. There is no danger in the trip except the problem of
getting there and getting away again, and that is now removed by The
Journal's yacht. I would have gone earlier had any of the periodicals
that asked me to go shown me any way to get there-- THERE IS NO FEVER
THIS TIME OF YEAR and as you know fever never touches me. It got all
the others in Central America and never worried me at all. There is no
danger of getting shot, as the province into which we go, the Santa
Clara province, is owned and populated and patrolled by the Cubans. It
is no more Spanish than New Jersey and the Spaniards cannot get in
there. We have the strongest possible letters from the Junta, and I
have from Lamont, Bayard and Olney and credentials in every language.
We will sit around the Gomez camp and send messengers back to the
coast. It is a three days trip and as Gomez may be moving from place
to place you may not hear from us for a month and we may not hear from
you but remember it was a much longer time than that before you heard
from me when I went to Honduras. Also keep in mind that I am going as
a correspondent only and must keep out of the way of fighting and that
I mean to do so, as Chamberlain says we want descriptive stories not
brave deeds-- Major Flint who has arranged the trip for us was down
there with Maceo as a correspondent. He saw six fights and never shot
off his gun once because as he said it was not his business to kill
people and he has persuaded me that he is right, so I won't do anything
but look on-- I have bought at The Journal's expense a fifty dollar
field glass which is a new invention and the best made. I have marked
it so that you can see a man fiv