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 
[ 156 ] 
