Beautiful and delicate senoritas would disguise themselves in men's attire and steal out at night to the near-by haunts of lover or brother in the "Long Grass," as the insurgents' camps are called, with food secreted in false pockets, or letters, whose envelopes had been dipped in ink, hidden in their black hair. Medicines were carried in canes, and cloth for clothes or wounds was concealed in the lining of coats. One girl, disguised as a vender, frequently carried to the woods dynamite in egg shells deftly put together. She had many thrilling experiences, but her narrowest escape was when a Spanish soldier by the roadside insisted on taking from the basket an egg, to let its contents drop in a hot and ready pan. He was with difficulty persuaded to forego the meal. The dynamite was made by another woman, who carefully obtained the ingredients at various times and at widely scattered drug stores. And so, with almost every Cuban man, woman and child united in a fixed determination to make the island one of the free and independent nations of the earth, the final struggle was begun. CHAPTER XVII. THE CUBAN JUNTA AND ITS WORK. Organization Which Has Represented the Insurgents in the United States--Splendid Work Done by Senor Tomas Estrada Palma and His Staff--Sources of the War Funds--Generosity of Cuban Cigar Makers Who Have Supported the Revolution--Liberal Gifts from Americans-- Some Inside Facts about Filibustering--American Sailors Do Not Like to Capture Insurgent Supplies--Palma's Address to the American People. From the moment of the first outbreak of insurrection in Cuba, in February, 1895, the name of the Cuban Junta has been a familiar phrase to everyone in the United States, and yet its functions and its organization have been by no means well understood. There have been those in Congress and elsewhere who have spoken of it slightingly as an organization banded together for its own profit in some way, not realizing that its members were the trusted representatives abroad of the whole Cuban people.