Through these wild forsaken regions there are neither roads nor paths, and the enemy has concealed the trace of his footsteps with the utmost precaution. Every bush may mask an ambuscade, and behind every rock some danger lurks. Sometimes the Spaniards--to whom experience has taught many things--may mark the exact position of the rebels by the whirl of the vultures, circling high above it, watching the time when, after the camp has broken up, they may make a descent upon the scanty fragments of victuals left behind, or upon the dead bodies of those who have perished of wounds, of starvation, perchance, or of some malignant fever. Overhead is a brazen black-blue sky, through which the sun darts red-hot rays, or else a black stretch of dense clouds, belching cataracts of water from week's end to week's end, and frequently torn by the most terrific storms of thunder and lightning. The marvel of it is that so many men, and even women, are able to live at all, under such dreadful conditions, more often than not lacking the veriest necessaries of life, and depending for their daily food on their knowledge of the qualities, poisonous or harmless, of the various fruits, berries, and herbs they find about their path. I wonder if it ever occurs to people who talk so glibly of Cuban affairs, over their well-spread tables, that at this very moment there are considerably over a hundred thousand human beings encamped, under these appalling conditions, in various districts of Cuba, not to mention the miserable _reconcentrados_, or men out of employment, whom the towns-people reject, whom the rebel army is not allowed to absorb into its ranks, and who, between the two camps, have been systematically starved to death, especially under the merciless and cruel rule of General Weyler.