A: A very good map of Cuba may be purchased on news-stands for
10 cents.]

* * * * *

Reports have come that the dynamite-gun, of which the Cubans were so
proud, has proved a failure.

The various nations, all over the world, are watching the trial of this
gun with the greatest interest. It can be so easily handled, can be
carried by ten men, and put together and made ready for firing two minutes
after it is unloaded, that other nations are anxious to see if it is
really the valuable weapon it is claimed to be.

Besides the advantages of being light and easy to handle, it can be fired
without noise or smoke, and therefore its whereabouts are not easily
discovered by an enemy; and moreover, if it has to be abandoned in a
retreat, it can be disabled with one sharp blow of a stone, so that it can
never be turned on its fleeing owners by a victorious enemy.

If the report about it is true, it has one fault, that is so serious that
it outweighs all the virtues. This fault is that the dynamite-gun has a
habit of going off at both ends; that is to say, it is liable to explode
both at the breech and the muzzle. It may therefore be quite as
destructive to the army firing it, as to the enemy at which it is fired.

Of course this will render the gun very unpopular, if it is true; but
people who understand the weapon declare that the fault lies, not in the
gun, but with the climate of the West Indies.

The three tubes of this gun (which we described fully in Number 6 of
THE GREAT ROUND WORLD) are fastened together at the breech with a
clasp which holds the whole mechanism of the gun in place.

The climate of the West Indies is so moist that metal rusts in an
amazingly short space of time, and it is difficult to keep anything bright
and polished.

It is supposed by those who understand the gun that, having been
constantly exposed to the moist air, it has rusted, and that the important
clasp has become so rusty that it can no longer be pushed fully home, and
so the gun is not secure.

In their opinion the failure of the dynamite-gun has not been proved; it
may be necessary to make some alterations to fit it for service in swampy
countries, but that as a weapon it is still a success.

* * * * *

Terrible floods are reported from the Mississippi Valley. A section of the
country equal in size to the whole State of Missouri is now under water,
and steamboats are