American energy and capital, governed by a firm military hand with
even justice, it will blossom as the rose; and, in the course of three
or four generations, even the Cuban may be brought to appreciate the
virtues of cleanliness, temperance, industry, and honesty.

Our good roads ended at Siboney, and from there on to Gen. Wheeler's
headquarters was some of the worst road ever traveled. Part of it lay
through deep valleys, where the sun was visible scarcely more than an
hour at noontime, and the wet, fetid soil was tramped into a muck of
malarial slime under foot of the mules and men. The jungle became
ranker, the Spanish bayonets longer and their barbs sharper in these
low bottom jangles. The larger undergrowth closed in more sharply on
the trail, and its boughs overhung so much in some places that it
became necessary to cut them away with axes in order to pass.

These guns were the first wheeled vehicles that had ever disturbed the
solitude of this portion of Cuba. The chocolate-colored natives of
Cuba sneak; the white native of Cuba, when he travels at all, goes on
horseback. He very seldom travels in Cuba at all, because he is not
often there. Consequently the roads in Cuba, as a rule, are merely
small paths sufficient for the native to walk along, and they carry
the machete in order to open a path if necessary. These low places in
the valleys were full of miasmatic odors, yellow fever, agues, and all
the ills that usually pertain to the West Indian climate.

At other places the road ran along the tops of the foot-hills from one
to two hundred feet higher than the bottom of these valleys. Here the
country was much more open. The path was usually wide enough for the
guns to move with comparative ease. Sometimes one wagon could pass
another easily. These parts of the road were usually more or less