100 OTJBA ANH POBTO BIOO 



habitants. In addition to the army of soldiers, there is a 

 vast horde of subordinate officials, all Spaniards, who col- 

 lect the cust on is and attend to other minor executive duties. 



The lower classes of the Spanish male population of 

 Havana porters, draymen, and clerks are organized into 

 a dangerous and oftentimes uncontrollable military force, 

 known as the Volunteers, who, while never having been 

 known to take the field, are a serious menace to the peace 

 of the city, being feared equally by the authorities, over 

 whose heads they hold the threat of mutiny, and by the 

 resident and unarmed Cubans, over whom they hold the 

 threat of massacre. Up to date the record of this organ- 

 ized mob has been a series of horrible crimes, such as 

 shooting down a crowd of peaceable citizens as they 

 emerged from the theater, firing into the office and din- 

 ing-room of a hotel, assaulting the residences of Cuban 

 gentlemen, and in 1871 forcing the authorities to execute 

 forty-three medical students, all boys under twenty, be- 

 cause one of them had been accused of scratching the glass 

 plate on a vault containing the remains of a Volunteer. 

 Fifteen thousand Volunteers witnessed with exultation this 

 ignoble execution. 



Although of Spanish blood, the Cubans, through adap- 

 tation to environment, have become a different class from 

 the people of the mother-country, just as the American 

 stock has become differentiated from the English. Under 

 the influence of their surroundings, they have developed 

 into a gentle, industrious, and normally peaceable race, not 

 to be judged by the combativeness which they have de- 

 veloped under a tyranny such as has never been imposed 

 upon any other people. The better class of Camagueynos, 1 

 as the natives of the interior are fond of calling themselves, 

 aside from the customary number of idlers and spoiled sons 

 of wealthy parents one sees in Havana, are certainly the 

 finest, the most valiant, and the most independent men 

 of the island, while the women have the highest type of 



1 From Camaguey, the Cuban name of an east-central province. 



