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This news, which proved to be true, was a very heavy blow to the revolutionaries, who regarded Antonio as far and away their most capable and energetic leader; and soon afterward they sustained a further very serious loss, in the person of Rius Rivera, who had arrived in Pinar del Rio to take the place of Maceo, but who, in the month of March, 1897, was wounded in a skirmish near San Cristobal, being afterwards captured and deported.
As is already well known in the United States, General Weyler issued an order some months ago commanding the country people living in the provinces of Pinar del Rio, Havana and Matanzas to betake themselves with their belongings to the fortified towns. His object in doing this was to prevent the pacificos from giving help to the insurgents, and from sheltering them and the wounded in their huts.
On the following morning the two Montijos and Jack were astir betimes, in order to catch an early train to Pinar del Rio; and nine o'clock found them ashore and on the platform, waiting for the train to emerge from the siding into which it had been shunted.
"They are poor," agreed Stuart, "and in this part of the island they seem a lot poorer than in the Pinar plains, where I lived before. Why? Here, nine out of every ten of the guarijos we've seen, live like hogs in a sty. Most of the huts we've passed aren't fit for human beings to live in. Why is it?"
In the tanneries of Pinar del Rio most of the workmen are colored, also in the saddle factories of Havana, Guanabacoa, Cardenas and other places. Although the insurgent army is not yet disbanded, the sugar-planters get plenty of help from their ranks by offering fair wages. New York Sun.
Then Alvaros, who had feigned not to have recognised Jack, exclaimed: "By the by, I must not forget to tell you a most interesting item of news. Do either of you fellows happen to know, or to have heard of, a certain Don Hermoso Montijo, who owns a large tobacco plantation in the direction of Pinar del Rio?
The most difficult of access are Baracoa, the oldest city of the island, and Trinidad, founded only a few years later. Glancing at some of these places, in their order from west to east, the first is Pinar del Rio, a comparatively modern city, dating really from the second half of the 18th Century.
To my surprise I learned that bodies of insurgents who then held and had held for six years nearly the entire eastern province of Santiago de Cuba and Puerto Principe, and part of the extreme western province of Pinar del Rio had only a few weeks before landed by night at the port La Playa de Batabano, fifteen miles away, and with the cry of "Free Cuba and death to the Spaniard!" had blotted out the town and then marched into the heart of the country, burning houses, killing the whites and calling upon the slaves to join them in freeing Cuba.
In time, it became known that the choicest tobacco in the market came from the western end of Cuba, from the Province of Pinar del Rio. It was given a distinct name, Vuelta Abajo, a term variously translated but referring to the downward bend of the section of the island in which that grade is produced. Here is grown a tobacco that, thus far, has been impossible of production elsewhere.
Then he, Don Hermoso, and Carlos held a consultation as to how the prisoners were to be disposed of, the difficulty of feeding and controlling so large a number being one that was likely to grow daily: and it was finally decided that, as the rest of the army had by this time passed on, and were scarcely likely to return over the same ground, the sound prisoners, together with those of the wounded who were so slightly hurt as to be able to travel, should be set at liberty and escorted for some few miles on the road to Pinar del Rio by a strong band of armed negroes, whose duty it would be to see that the released men did not attempt to rejoin the main army; that as soon as those were disposed of, the estate which was practically destroyed, and therefore could not very well be further injured should be abandoned to the Spanish doctor and such assistants as he could persuade to remain with him to look after the wounded; and that, as soon as the Senora's health would permit, Don Hermoso, Carlos, and Jack should attach themselves to one of the guerrilla bands who were hanging upon the skirts of the main Spanish army and harassing it night and day.
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