If this measure had gone no farther it might have been condoned. The British, in the Boer War, resorted to such an expedient, but they made their detention camps as comfortable as possible, they fed and clothed the inmates sufficiently, and afforded them medical attention. Weyler’s wretched _reconcentrados_ were simply herded together and left to their own resources. They were reduced to begging of a people only one degree less impoverished than themselves. The townsman who gave a _tortilla_ to a starving _pacifico_ was usually depriving his own family. Disease, unchecked, ran riot in the concentration camps. The mortality was fearful and those who survived were unfitted for years, the men to work, the women to bear healthy children. Cuba has not yet passed from the effects of Weyler’s barbaric measure. After General Weyler’s arrival, Spain continued to send steady reënforcements to Cuba to fill the ranks thinned by disease. He never had fewer than one hundred thousand men under his command. With these he entered upon vigorous military operations, at first concentrating his forces upon Pinar del Rio with the object of crushing Maceo. He endeavored to isolate the leader at the western end of the Island by constructing a _trocha_, from coast to coast, across its narrowest part. The measure failed in its purpose. Maceo crossed the barrier and met his death near Habana in an otherwise trivial skirmish. Weyler now directed his efforts against Gomez and Garcia, but his task was even a more difficult one than that of Campos had been. After spreading the rebellion over the entire Island, Gomez changed his tactics. It now became the practice of the insurgents to move stealthily about in the _manigua_, burning and destroying wherever they could find anything upon which to lay their hands, but avoiding contact with the Spanish troops. Thus Weyler’s soldiers were kept constantly chasing back and forth in endless and futile pursuit of an intangible enemy. By his orders such property as had escaped destruction by the rebels was ruined by the royalists.