Cuba should have established a central railway system running the length of the Island from east to west, with branches extending on all sides, like its rivers, to the many good towns and harbours on both north and south coasts. Instead of this it has a little less than a thousand miles of line, operated by seven timid companies, extending in various directions, but leaving the two ends of the Island farther apart in actual days of travel than are New York and San Francisco. The capital city of Cuba, Havana, has within it the possibilities of a great and beautiful city; the commercial and industrial city of a prosperous country of five millions of people, and the winter health-resort for the rich and fashionable families of all North America. Its public buildings should have been of the best, its tropical parks and gardens the most fascinating in the world, its streets and pavements the most substantial, its healthfulness unquestioned, and its harbours and docks thronged with shipping and resonant with commercial activity. The merchants of Havana should rank among the richest and most prosperous in the world, and the business, manufacturing, and social interests of the place be equal to those of Boston or Baltimore or San Francisco. What applies to Havana applies only in a lesser degree to the other cities of Cuba, many of which are excellently located and should be important industrial and commercial centres, with numerous fields for the modern municipal enterprise which has done so much to improve the condition of the urban population of Europe and of the United States. Last, though not least, the Island should have been dotted over with the trinity of civilisation--the home, the schoolhouse, and the church. It is the lack of these three great elements of national strength and progress, underlying Cuba's ills, that is the cause of much of its misfortune. The building of the home, the establishment of the school, and the tolerance of religious worship in half a century changed Texas from a wilderness to a great and prosperous State, with the possibilities of an empire. These same forces, had full play been given them in Cuba during the same period, would have transformed that Island into all that has herein been depicted. Its resources are abundant to maintain five and even ten millions of persons, for only a small proportion of its area is populated. The climate is healthful and the dangers to those unacclimated which lurk in its seaport towns may all be controlled by sanitary and engineering science. That these possibilities have not been realised does not lie with Cuba itself, but is due to the numerous causes which have retarded and stopped its development, and which have finally, after years of strife and war, left the Island with population depleted, agriculture prostrate, industry destroyed, and commerce devastated.