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If the truth were known, I dare say, it would be found you are a friend to Cespedes. Anyhow, I'm tired of looking at you; if you are not more retiring, you will find yourself in the Cabañas." "Good evening," Remigio repeated in an even tone. With his hand still on Tirso's arm he tried to force him into the café; but the other, dark with passion, broke away.
"Carlos Cespedes left his practice of the law at Bayamo for a desperate effort with less than a hundred and thirty men. But they were successful, and in a few weeks we had fifteen thousand, with the constitution of a republican government drawn. We ended slavery," here, for a breath, he addressed Charles Abbott. "But in that," he specified, "we were different from you.
Its pages show such names as Velasquez, Grijalva, Hernan Cortes, and Narvaez, and centuries later, Cespedes, Marti, and Palma. Here was enacted the grim tragedy of the Virginius, and here was the conflict that terminated Spain's once vast dominion in the western world. My own impression is that most of its history has already been written, that it will have no important future.
It is not possible to tell in detail of the monstrous cruelties practiced by the Spanish army during those years of carnage. Here is the testimony of one officer: "We captured seventeen, thirteen of whom were shot outright; on dying they shouted, 'Hurrah for Free Cuba, hurrah for independence. A mulatto said, 'Hurrah for Cespedes. On the following day we killed a Cuban officer and another man.
"Now, I quite realize what Cespedes felt, when, finding that visitors were absorbed by the admirable finish of some jars and vases in the foreground of the 'Last Supper, upon which he had expended so much time and thought, he called his servant and exclaimed in great chagrin, 'Andres, rub me out these things, since, after all my care and study, people choose to see nothing but these impertinences."
At last matters progressed so rapidly in the mother country that the Cubans dared not wait for the completion of their plans, but on October 10, 1868, began the hostilities. On that day, Carlos M. de Cespedes, a lawyer of Bayamo, took the initiative with 128 poorly armed men, and issued a declaration of independence at Yara.
The Lopez expedition would seem to have been the most serious and best organized attempt at revolution in Cuba by invasion, though there have been formidable attempts since. From 1868 to 1876 Cuba may be said to have been in a state of chronic civil war. This outbreak was led by Carlos Manuel de Cespedes, an able lawyer and wealthy planter of Bayamo, in the eastern department of the island.
A sad instance illustrative of this fact was told us by a resident of Havana. The young ladies and matrons of a certain circle in the city, at the commencement of the year 1872, had put their diamonds and precious stones together to realize money for forwarding supplies to the insurgents under Cespedes, who was then operating in the vicinity of Santiago.
Though unsuccessful in the object of his search, he nevertheless accomplished an important service for geographical science, in determining that no such passage existed within the region he had sailed. VI. c. 10. Herrera, III, VIII. S. Cespedes, Yslario General, in MS. Cespedes was cosmographer major of the Indies in Seville and wrote many geographical works early in the seventeenth century.
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