106 CUBA AND TORTO RICO 



hundred thousand colored people have 1 n destroyed dur- 

 ing the latest insurrection. A large number <>!' them had 

 but recently been released from the bonds of slavery, and 

 were naturally the poorer class, upon which the hardships 

 have mostly fallen, being generally the field-hands in the 

 sugar districts of Havana, Matanzas, and Santa Clara, 

 where the death-rate of the terrible Weyler reconcentni- 

 miento has been greatest. Three hundred thousand of the 

 five hundred thousand blacks belonged to these provinces, 

 and of this number fully one half have been starved to 

 death. 



The population of Cuba has undergone great modifica- 

 tion since the collection of the statistics given. Probably 

 it has been reduced to not more than a million inhabitants 

 by emigration of non-combatants, destruction in battle, 

 official deportation of suspects and political prisoners, and 

 by the reconcentration system. The rural population of 

 the four western provinces of Pinar del Rio, Havana, 

 Matanzas, and Santa Clara has been largely obliterated. 

 Estimates of this extermination are all more or less con- 

 jectural, but the Bishop of Havana is authority for the 

 statement that more than four hundred thousand people 

 have been buried in the consecrated cemeteries. 



