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On the one hand, the former is accustomed to the climate, knows the country, and is trained to long marches and difficulties of all sorts inseparable from his daily life; the latter is unacclimatised, knows nothing of the country, and, accustomed to have his every want supplied, is at a loss when any extraordinary hardships or difficulties are encountered; he has only his skill in his arms and discipline in his favour, and sometimes that skill may be also possessed by his foe.
This, on paper, appears to be enormous, yet it was not so in reality: for, whereas the Cubans were all native to the soil and inured to the climate, and were, moreover, familiar with the topography of the country, the Spanish soldiers were mostly young, raw recruits, poor shots, quite new to service in the Tropics, unacclimatised, of poor stamina, and therefore peculiarly liable to fall victims to the fever and dysentery which follow upon exposure to tropical rain.
The promise, for instance, of the case I have just named, the case of the account to be taken, in a circle of free talk, of a new and innocent, a wholly unacclimatised presence, as to which such accommodations have never had to come up, might well have appeared as limited as it was lively; and if these pages were not before us to register my illusion I should never have made a braver claim for it.
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