worked faithfully and intelligently, have probably done a little
better than they would have done at home. The great wealth for which all,
doubtless, earnestly hoped, and in which many, doubtless, really believed,
has not come. This settlement is only one of many speculative exploitations
in Cuba. Some of these have been fairly honest, but many of them have been
little better than rank swindles. Many have been entirely abandoned, the
buyers losing the hard-earned dollars they had invested. Others, better
located, have been developed, by patience, persistence, and thrift, into
fairly prosperous colonies. I do not know how many victims have been
caught by unscrupulous and ignorant promoters in the last fifteen years,
principally in the United States and in Canada, but they are certainly
many, so many that the speculative industry has declined in recent years.
Many of the settlers who have remained have learned the game, have
discovered that prosperity in Cuba is purchased by hard work just as it is
elsewhere. In different parts of the island, east, west, and centre, there
are now thrifty and contented colonists who have fought their battle, and
have learned the rules that nature has formulated as the condition of
success in such countries. Whether these people have really done any better
than they would have done had they stayed at home and followed the rules
there laid down, is perhaps another question. At all events, there are
hundreds of very comfortable and happy American homes in Cuba, even in the
Isle of Pines, where they persist in growling because it is Cuba and not
the United States.

In a review of a country including forty-four thousand square miles of
territory, condensed into two chapters, it is quite impossible to include
all that is worth telling. Moreover, there is much in the island of which
no adequate description can be given. There is much that must be seen if it
if to be fairly understood and appreciated.

VIII

_THE UNITED STATES AND CUBA_

IN his message to Congress, on December 5, 1898, President McKinley
declared that "the new Cuba yet to arise from the ashes of the past must
needs be bound to us by ties of singular intimacy and strength if its
enduring welfare is to be assured."

Probably to many of the people of the United States, the story of our
relations with Cuba had its beginning with the Spanish-American war.
That is quite like a notion that the history of an apple begins with