But there were still the Constitutionalists to be reckoned with. They were implacable. They had shown in their convention a few weeks before their hostility to autonomy. They had ostracised Blanco. Now they proceeded to further extremes. They organized riotous disturbances in Havana, and made violent demonstrations against Blanco and, which was in some respects more serious, against the American government and the American citizens in Cuba. So ominous did these disturbances become at the middle of January that the Consul-General, Fitzhugh Lee, was driven to request the sending of a war ship to Havana harbor for the protection of American citizens. In consequence, on January 24 the cruiser _Maine_ was sent to Havana. This action was taken after consultation with the Spanish government, in which that government expressed great pleasure at the prospect of thus having a friendly visit of the American vessel to Cuban waters, and arranged to have its own cruiser the _Vizcaya_ make a return visit to New York. This was not satisfactory, however, to the Spanish Minister at Washington, Senor Dupuy de Lome, who having failed to bring President McKinley to his own point of view of Cuban affairs, showed plainly his animosity against that gentleman, and wrote a letter to a personal friend characterizing the President as a vacillating and time-serving politician. This letter through some clandestine means was placed in the hands of the United States Secretary of State, who at once sent for the Minister and asked him plumply if he had written it. The latter of course acknowledged that he had. Thereupon the Secretary cabled to the American Minister at Madrid to request the Spanish government to recall the offending envoy. This the Spanish government would doubtless have done, but for the fact that De Lome forestalled such action by cabling his resignation an hour before the dispatch of the Secretary of State reached Madrid. The Spanish government then sent Senor Polo y Bernabe to be its Minister at Washington. [Illustration: THE BAY AND HARBOR OF HAVANA The capital of Cuba is seated upon the shore of a spacious and beautiful bay, the entrance to which is between the two bold headlines crowned respectively by the Morro Castle and La Punta fortress, while the domes and spires of the great city have for a background the central mountain range of the island. The harbor of Havana is one of the most secure and commodious in the world, and in commercial importance, measured by tonnage of shipping, ranks among the foremost in the Western Hemisphere.]