"The Bishop of Havana, Santander Y. Fritos, has also stated the loss of life shown by his parochial records to be over the figure quoted. A TRAVELING DAIRY. "Of the threequarters of a million living persons now in the towns of Cuba, two-thirds have practically no means of subsistence. The other third are fairly able to buy food for themselves. The almost absolute cessation of sugar-making and tobacco-raising has brought hitherto rich families to extreme poverty. Το their credit, be it said, these thousands of families, even in the throes of genteel want, have done, and are doing, all they can for their destitute countrymen. But that is comparatively little. CaptainGeneral Blanco is also using his slender facilities to the utmost in relieving distress. But that is very little also. In a signed interview General Blanco recently said: 'I ex A DEAD DAUGHTER OF FAMINE. A poor country girl-Victim of famine in Los Fossos, Havana. pect to save three-quarters of the reconcentrados now alive. Allowing for the number existing at that time, the other quarter would amount to about a quarter of a million persons.' "Havana has fewer reconcentrados, in comparison to its population, than almost any other city or town in Cuba. Yet, within five minutes' walk from the beautiful square are sights to make one weep. In a big, bare house, called 'Los Fossos,' there are hourly scenes which beggar description. On the bare floor in a corner lay two women's forms, each with a baby upon its breast. One mother and one baby died while I was there. The dead baby still lay upon its living mother's breast. She did Scores of the destitute were crowded in just such chambers as this. not know it had died. She was too weak. And the dead mother's bony arms clasped a living baby. Strong men who saw that scene broke down and cried. In the same place I have seen twelve uncoffined bodies lying unregarded on the floor in different parts of the building, surrounded by closely packed women and children, scarcely less motionless than they. "For over two hundred persons there were seventy-five small biscuits, and for each, once a day, an unsavory panful of codfish, beans, and oil, all cooked together. The sufferers could not eat it. "To the bishop's palace, thousands of babes in their mothers' arms come for succor from the society which the good old man has organized. There are over 5000 children registered, but only three or four hundred can be helped a day. It would break one's heart to see the throngs of sad women who turn hopelessly away without the bottle of thin milk and the handful of cornmeal which the few secure for their little ones. The starving babes! And such babies! Tiny skeletons, with the skin stretched tightly over the poor little protruding bones, or hanging in folds over them where the child-flesh has shrunken away. They seem all dead but their eyes-their big, sad, beseeching eyes. There is not a WORKERS AT THE CENTRAL RELIEF STATION, ESTRELLA STREET, HAVANA. man in the United States who could look once into a poor, little, starving reconcentrado baby's eyes without turning away. There are thousands of such babies to be saved. The governor of the province of Pinar del Rio states that there are six thousand orphans there alone. No one asks help for them. Three days ago a sad but not an unusual thing occurred in the United States consulate. A woman entered, asking food. She had two little ones at her skirts and a babe in her arms. The baby died while she stood there. "But the suffering is worse in the smaller towns of Cuba, where the number of destitute country people 'concentrated' there has quadrupled and quintupled the population. In these places, private charity was almost instantly exhausted. Such a town is Madruga. A Spanish correspondent writes from there to a Havana paper: 'During the past fortnight there have been in this place 112 deaths, principally for lack of food. From early dawn one can see nothing else in the streets but women, men and children, pallid and attenuated, imploring public charity; others thrown upon door steps, where they are collected to be hauled to the cemetery. That which happens here is horrible. The pen refuses to describe it, for nothing like it ever happened before, even in the most remote parts of Africa.' "Another characteristic reconcentrado town is Santo Domingo. La Lucha, Havana's principal daily prints: "That which occurs and which has gone on here since April has no precedent in the annals of misery. Hunger in its awful nakedness, want, malaria, and just now, smallpox, are day after day finishing with the people of this town, without any one taking a single measure to avert, even in part, the annihilation of Santo Domingo. There have died, out of 6000, more than 4000 persons according to the medical records.' "The spectacle could not be more heartrending. A HAVANA FAMINE VICTIM. In the railroad station and in the streets stagger a multitude of suffering reconcentrados, pale, attentuated, shrunken up by fevers, simply awaiting the moment when they shall fall dead in the doorway of some building. It is impossible to form an idea of such misery without actually seeing these horrible sights. In a cart, piled one upon the other, they carry as many |