a tried veteran of the War of Independence, and chief of the Rural Guards, gave an immediate order that they should be captured, dead or alive, and before ten o'clock the next morning nearly all of them had been taken and confined in the jails of Havana, where afterwards they were tried and convicted. These men in their defense claimed that the president of the Senate, Señor Moru Delgado, a prominent Liberal leader, had promised to meet them at daylight, on the morning of the assassination, with a body of three hundred armed and mounted Liberals, who were to start a revolution against President Palma; but did not fulfill his promise. The men who had been convicted were permitted to remain in jail until, as is too often the custom in some Latin American countries, they were freed by a general amnesty bill which had been forced through Congress by the Liberal party. The tendency to revolt against the Palma government apparently subsided with the arrest of these first disturbers, but, during the following January, 1906, reports of trouble in the extreme western portion of the island came to the notice of the officials. The leader was Pino Guerra, who, through his popularity as an accordion player at country dances, had secured election to the House of Representatives; and who with his taste for games of chance, at which he was generally unlucky, had got into debt to the amount of $7,000. His creditors in these debts were persistent, and this fact was given by him in a letter to General Fernando Freyre de Andrade, President of the House of Representatives, as an excuse for the revolution which he started. Pino Guerra indeed intimated that if someone would extend to him a little personal loan of $7,000 he would refrain from causing any trouble to the government. General Freyre de Andrade, being a politician who believed in

compromise and that even a poor end would justify the means, suggested to Guerra that he knew of $3,000 that had been appropriated for some purpose and not used, which might possibly be turned over, if his creditors would take it on account. "General" Guerra, as he called himself, consulted with his creditors, and they concluded to accept the offer, if they could get the cash. So the embryo revolutionist was conducted to the presence of the President, where the whole matter was explained by General Freyre de Andrade. To their surprise, President Palma promptly refused to have any of the treasury funds used to buy-or to pay blackmail to— a revolutionist. So "General" Guerra retired to nurse his resentment and to plan mischief; until some six weeks later when he started the uprising that was locally known as "Mr. Taft's picnic," because the leaders asserted that the capturing of the Palma government would be nothing more than a picnic, and assured Mr. Taft on his arrival to straighten out affairs that they really had not intended to assassinate President Palma, although three or four distinct plots had been made for that purpose; that they only meant to capture him, put him on the government yacht, and carry him to some remote part of the country and give him just a "pleasant picnic."

President Palma was repeatedly warned by the secret service, of which Pepe Jerez Varona was the chief, that serious trouble was coming through the propaganda of the Liberal party whose leaders had taken the position that the late election had been fraudulent and that the Liberals had been prevented from casting their votes, which they said was sufficient excuse for the uprising that was imminent. Local bands of the so-called "Constitutional Army" soon began to make their appearance throughout the central districts of the island. Each of

THE PRESIDENT'S HOME

The new Presidential Palace, which replaces in its functions the old home of the Spanish Governors, is of striking architecture and impressive size, affording ample room for many other functions than the mere housing of the President and his family; and in completeness of its appointments and beauty of its furnishings and internal decorations must rank among the finest official residences in the world.