was butchered by the infuriated soldiers. It was
better so. Had they been spared it would have only been for the moment,
for by official decree of the Captain-General of Cuba, indorsed by the
Madrid Government, every inhabitant within the insurrectionary line,
without regard to age or sex, was doomed to death without form of trial.

At San Marcos we made a halt to view the scene of the fight and examined
the heaps of ashes where the fires were kindled which consumed the
bodies of the slain. Two or three were my countrymen. At the time it was
quite the thing for venturesome Americans to go and join the rebels and
help the fight for "Cuba libre." For some years every few days notices
would appear in the press about some Americans having been shot for
joining or attempting to join the rebels. This went on until the affair
of the steamer Virginus, when her crew and passengers, to the number of
150, were shot, the steamer having been captured close to the shore and
about to land men and guns. Then our Government awoke and forbade
Spanish officials to shoot Americans without trial.

As I stood there curiously examining the marks of the conflict, or
examining some part of an unconsumed bone, I little thought that in a
very few days I myself would be a fugitive, creeping through jungles and
over tropic plains, seeking to join the comrades of the men on whose
ashes I was then treading, to aid their fight for free Cuba.

Perhaps my subsequent fate made me ponder over my happy life in Cuba,
and compare the horrible misery of my prison life, with its hardships
and degrading detail, with the brightness of those days, when love,
obedience, wealth and luxury were mine.

But in those long years, when in their gloom and depression I was
fighting to keep off insanity by ignoring the dreadful present and
dwelling on the past, no incident of all my life on the island haunted
me more than this at San Marcos. Every detail was photographed on my
brain, and as I recalled that blackened spot strewn with ashes soddened
by tropical rains, soon to be all the greener for the fertilizing
tragedy, many a thousand times I said, "Would to God my ashes were
mingled with the dead there."

Soon after leaving San Marcos, striking into the jungle, the road became
so narrow that we had to go single file. I found the silence of the
tropical forest impressive, and think it had its effect on us all--even
the negroes and dogs moved on, making no sound. Altho