The town is of course full of Spanish military and their accessories, civil functionaries who are all Spanish, money-makers, adventurers, shoddy. The Spanish army is at "the front," posted across or partly across the island on a sort of strong picket-line, fortified by block-houses, whence watch is kept on the movements of the insurgents, who seem to come and go as they please in the Spanish front, and cross the lines with impunity. The Spanish hold the whole seaboard, all important towns and villages, hold the insurgents practically in check, so far as the fertile region of the island is concerned, and from year to year keep military matters just about in _statu quo_. The insurgents dwell in the wildest portion of the island, often in almost impenetrable woods, living the life of savages, and depending on the bounty of Nature for their daily bread. So the war lingers. It is not what we would call a war: it is a condition of armed hostility. It is conducted almost wholly at the expense of Spain in _men_, wholly at the expense of Cuba in _money_. The Cuban volunteers are a home-guard, but the purse of the Cubans is open. Spain is not loath to dip into it, and taxation for carrying on the government and the war has become very onerous--dreadfully so, in fact, though I believe that the Cubans do not realize it so fully as strangers do. The government is impoverished; the war makes no progress; what becomes of the enormous revenue derived from the taxes? A rich planter said to me dryly, "They are ignorant men: they make mistakes in applying it." Hard things are openly said of all Spanish officials; and all officials, from the captain-general to the harbor pilot, are Spanish. Startling things are heard here every day in political and military discussions. The people think in classes: there is the Spanish view, the Creole view, the foreign view--none very dispassionate, and none very accurate. There is no accepted basis of fact for anything: nobody believes anybody else, and truth here lies in a _very_ deep well. But one thing else is clear. Cuba, so gifted by Nature, is being despoiled by man; and what ought to be a garden will become overgrown with weeds if there is not a change of fortune. There is taxation without representation under an iron despotism: there is an army without war, and the people look on. It is not necessary to find any new means of going to the bad at a gallop. The rich give practical support to the Spanish, and moral support to the insurrection; but if the insurrection should triumph, I can't see how it will benefit the Creole Cubans of property. I think ideas here are confused on the subject, and while they are giving hearty encouragement to neither cause, between the two they are sure to be utterly ruined.