A "Thousand-Mile Walk 



entrances and in the halls, and with the spacious 

 open-fielded appearance of their enclosed square 

 house-gardens or courts. Cubans in general ap- 

 pear to me superfinely polished, polite, and 

 agreeable in society, but in their treatment of 

 animals they are cruel. I saw more downright 

 brutal cruelty to mules and horses during the 

 few weeks I stayed there than in my whole life 

 elsewhere. Live chickens and hogs are tied in 

 bunches by the legs and carried to market thus, 

 slung on a mule. In their general treatment of 

 all sorts of animals they seem to have no 

 thought for them beyond cold-blooded, selfish 

 interest. 



In tropical regions it is easy to build towns, 

 but it is difficult to subdue their armed and 

 united plant inhabitants, and to clear fields 

 and make them blossom with breadstuff. The 

 plant people of temperate regions, feeble, un- 

 armed, unallied, disappear under the trampling 

 feet of flocks, herds, and man, leaving their 

 homes to enslavable plants which follow the 

 will of man and furnish him with food. But the 

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