CUBA— THE SUGAR MILL OF THE ANTILLES 



17 



to you to take a 

 chance because it will 

 help her widowed 

 mother; there a poor 

 old woman of eighty 

 wants you to buy, so 

 that she may get a 

 bite to eat. Now it 

 is the elevator boy in 

 the hotel, now the 

 bootblack in the bar- 

 ber - shop. Every- 

 where you turn, a lot- 

 tery ticket is before 

 you and a vendor beg- 

 ging you to buy. 



One regrets that 

 there is no e fit" o r t 

 made to ban this busi- 

 ness; but the Cubans 

 seem to take it as a 

 matter of course, and 

 the masses are ever 

 ready to take another 

 chance with each 

 passing drawing. 



Every city and town 

 in Cuba has its cock- 

 pit, and some of them 

 possess several. Sun- 

 day is a busy day for 

 the roosters and their 

 backers, and the en- 

 thusiasm with which 

 the habitues of the 

 cocking main wager 

 their pesos on their 

 favorites is unlimited. 

 The uninitiated spec- 

 tator wonders how it 

 is possible to un- 

 scramble the bedlam 

 of noise and to fol- 

 low the changing odds. 



Photograph by American Photograph Company 



CRUSHING CAN^ IN A CUBAN SUGAR MILL 



Hour after hour, day after day, week after week, the unending 

 procession of cane is drawn into the crushing machinery and the 

 sweet sap flows out. It is then mixed with whitewash and the im- 

 purities removed as the evaporation process proceeds (see text, 

 page 27). 



PLAYING JAI ALAI 



In the whole range of professional 

 sports there certainly has never been de- 

 vised a more thrilling game than jai alai 

 (pronounced high - a - ligh) , which has 

 been transplanted into Cuba from Spain. 



on opposite sides of a net, as in tennis. 

 and batting the ball back and forth with 

 rackets, they occupy in common the play- 

 ing space of the court. One side serves 

 the ball against the end wall, and on the 

 rebound the other side must drive it back 

 against the wall. Thus it is kept flying 

 from players to wall and from wall to 



It is a game that differs from tennis in players until one side fails to return it to 



that the court is a rectangle 210 feet long 

 and 36 feet wide, with one side wall and 

 two end walls. The floor is of cement 

 and the walls of carefully laid stone. In- 

 stead of the players arranging themselves 



the wall, when the opposing team scores 

 a point. 



Instead of rackets the players use 

 basket-woven affairs, crescent shaped. 

 with one end laced to the right hand and 



