The long streets are thronged, the balconies are crowded, Spanish flags float in all directions, and the troops march along under a shower of flowers, whilst young ladies are seen rushing forward to offer them refreshments. Now it must be remembered that at least two-thirds of these enthusiastic spectators are quite as Cuban as the most ardent of the rebels; but they are people who have something to lose by the continuance of the civil war, and a good deal to gain by its cessation, therefore they eagerly welcome the Spanish soldiers, in the hope that they may suppress the rebellion, without the intervention of the Americans, a people who, however well-intentioned they may be, are, from the Cuban point of view, aliens in race, and even in religion. We should never lose sight of the fact that the rebels are not the angels some writers would lead us to believe them. Even enthusiasts, who see their budding wings, acknowledge that they have destroyed, burnt, pillaged, and retaliated, quite as barbarously as their Spanish enemies. I remember hearing, from the lips of one who saw the outrage perpetrated, a story of some eight or ten Spanish women who, in the war of 1873, went to the rebel camp to beg the lives of their captured fathers, brothers, and husbands. The unhappy women were treated in the most revolting manner, and subsequently butchered. Hundreds of other stories, just as horrible, have been told of Maceo, and above all, of Manuel Garcia, the ex-brigand chief, who joined the rebel army, and boldly styled himself Manuel Ist, King of the Cuban highwaymen. He surrounded himself with a gang of picked ruffians, and became the terror of all the peaceful planters of both parties, from whom he used to levy tribute, and whom he never hesitated to murder, if they refused to submit to his extortions. This abominable personage was killed on February 24th, 1895, by the sacristan of the parish church of Arcos de Canosina.