d to march their forces right through the island to Havana,
destroying everything before them; and this terrible resolution they
carried into effect, with the result that their track became a long line
of burnt cane fields and fire-blackened buildings, the owners of which,
whether Spaniards or Cubans, foes or sympathisers, were of course
absolutely ruined. The Capitan-General, with ten thousand men, vainly
strove to check this terrible advance, but the insurgents easily eluded
him and forced their way into the western provinces; with the result
that the home Government superseded Campos, sending out in his stead
General Don Valeriano y Nicolan Weyler, a man of wide military
experience, and possessing a sinister and unenviable reputation for
energy and relentless severity.

The dispatch of such a man as General Weyler to Cuba was undoubtedly
due, in a very great measure, to the fact that the United States of
America, keeping a watchful eye upon the struggle going on, as it were,
at its very doors, manifested a rapidly increasing disposition to
sympathise with the insurgents, fighting gallantly for their liberty
against an almost overwhelming force. This exhibition of sympathy,
which the Americans took no especial pains to conceal, was highly
offensive to Spain, and unquestionably went far toward strengthening her
determination to suppress the revolution by force of arms; wherefore she
not only dispatched General Weyler to Cuba, but also sent with and after
him troops sufficient to raise the Spanish army in the island to the
number of two hundred and thirty-five thousand men, including guerrillas
and volunteers.

Meanwhile, Antonio Maceo, with a force of nearly four thousand men, had
penetrated so far west as the province of New Filipipa, where he
established himself in a stronghold among the fastnesses of the Sierras
de los Organos, or Organ Mountains, from which he swept down at frequent
intervals, first upon one town in the neighbourhood and then upon
another, harassing and cutting up the Spanish garrisons in them, and
generally making of himself a thorn in the flesh of Weyler. The spot in
which he had established himself was distant only some ten miles, as the
crow flies, from the hacienda Montijo; and he had no sooner made himself
comfortable in his new quarters than he surprised and slightly
discomposed the inhabitants of the casa by paying them a flying visit.
He had been one of the most determined advocates, a