Young Peoples History of the War with Spain | Page 2

Cuban Flag.]
When this dreadful state of affairs became known in the United States,
kind people sent several ship-loads of food and medicines and clothing
to the sufferers. This did a great deal of good, but all the poor people
could not be reached and they continued to die. Finally, the United
States told Spain that she ought not to have such a cruel man at the
head of affairs, and after a while Spain sent another general to take his
place. This new governor's name was Blanco, and he really tried to help
the poor people, but Spain had very little money to send him to buy
food for them, and so they went on dying. The soldiers, too, were in a
very bad condition; they had not been paid for a great many months;
they did not have enough to eat, and so they too sickened and died by
thousands. You can see that unless something was done to help the
poor people, they would all die and their beautiful island would become
a wilderness.
Besides being very proud, Spain was very poor. She had spent millions
of dollars trying to conquer the islanders, and had no money to buy
food for the sufferers that she had driven from their homes and huddled
like cattle in yards and gloomy inclosures. So she asked the United
States to help feed them, and the Red Cross Society, of which I will tell
you later, sent hundreds of tons of food, medicines and clothing to them.
These supplies were distributed by competent persons, and the relief

was very great, but very soon some of the Spaniards began to say that
the United States had no business to interfere in the affairs of the island,
and to stir up the people. The feeling became so strong that our
representative, Consul-General Lee, notified the authorities in the
United States that, the lives and property of American citizens living in
the island were not safe. It was for this reason that the battleship Maine
was sent to Havana, the chief city of the island. I will tell you about this
ship later.
[Illustration: President McKinley.]
Well, in spite of all that the United States had done to help Spain,
matters grew worse, and finally the United States was obliged to tell
Spain that, unless she took her soldiers away from the island and let the
people govern themselves, she would help them to become a free and
independent nation. When Spain received this message, she regarded it
as a declaration of war, and both sides prepared for the conflict.
But before telling you about the war, shall I tell you something about
the island and the group to which it belongs?
[Illustration: Map of the West Indies.]
The island is called Cuba. It belongs to a large group of islands known
as the West Indies; a changed form of the old name, West Indias, given
by Christopher Columbus, who thought that by sailing westward he had
reached islands off the shore of India. If you look on a map of the
Western Hemisphere, you will find the West Indies between the
Caribbean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean.
Most of these islands are high and rocky, seeming like a chain of
mountains in the ocean, with their tops above the waves. They are in
the tropical regions, and the climate is very hot in the lowlands and on
the coasts, but is delightful in the high parts all the year round. There
are only two seasons--wet and dry. The rainy season begins in the
spring or early summer, and lasts about six months.
What grows in these islands? Delicious fruits: mangoes, oranges,

cocoanuts, limes, pineapples, and bananas; many other valuable crops:
coffee, tobacco, maize, rice, sugar-cane, and cotton; immense forests of
mahogany and other valuable trees. This beautiful vegetation makes
these lands fair to look upon. Then, too, there are many birds with
gorgeous plumage. The islands have gold, silver, copper, and iron
mines; there are quarries of marble; and some kinds of precious stones
are found.
But this region is not a paradise. Snakes and other horrid things crawl
among the beautiful trees and foliage, and poisonous insects swarm in
every place. Earthquake shocks are often felt, and fearful hurricanes
sweep over the islands nearly every year, doing much damage.
A gentle race of Indians dwelt in these islands at the time of their
discovery, but the Spanish settlers treated the natives so cruelly that
after a few years they had ceased to exist. Many of the Indians were
sent to Spain and other countries and sold as slaves; the rest were made
to work in the mines, and as the Indians had never been used to such
work, they died from the hard labor. In