Part 2

After Columbus discovered Cuba the island seems to have been forgotten by the Spaniards, who bent all their efforts to explore and colonize the neighboring island of Haiti, to which they gave the name of Hispaniola, meaning pertaining to Spain or "Spanish land." Although the rising promontory of Cape Mayzi could be discerned on a clear day from the coast of Hispaniola, it was not until nearly twenty years after Columbus had made his memorable discovery that Diego, his son, determined to conquer and settle the island of Cuba. Diego Columbus was then Governor of Hispaniola, and under his orders Captain Valazquez disembarked with 300 men on the eastern coast of Cuba and founded the city of Baracoa. Then the Spaniards crawled around to the south and founded Santiago, which they made their capital, and then followed in quick succession the cities of Trinidad, Bayamo, Puerto Principe, Sancti Spiritus, and Remedios.

In 1515 the colonists founded a city near the present site of Batabanó, to which they gave the name of Habana, but the marshy land of the southern coast proved a very undesirable place for such a city as they intended to build. Proceeding to the north about thirty miles, they crossed the island and came to a beautiful little bay, surrounded by hills on one side and a stretch of flat land on the other. The bay resembled a huge bowl, with only just one narrow outlet into the sea where the two points of land almost met--the ridge of rock on one side and the flat land on the other. A more delightful nook for a city could not have been hit upon, so the new city of Havana was transplanted from its original site on the south coast to the shore of the bowl-like bay on the north.

Captain Velazquez was enthusiastic over his new city, and cutting loose from the Governor of Hispaniola he set up a government of his own. He made rapid strides in subjugating the peaceful inhabitants, whom he allowed to be treated with great cruelty, and Habana soon rose to be a city of importance. To protect it from any probable invasion from the sea, a fort was built on each of the points of land which nearly met, forming the narrow entrance to the bay. The one constructed on the city side of the bay was called La Punta. Upon the rocks on the opposite side was built the famous El Morro, which, in the Spanish language, is called a castle.

In 1762 the English sailed into the bay in spite of these forts, and took possession of Havana, which they held for nearly a year. After the English went away the Spanish government ordered the forts to be rebuilt, and neither money nor labor was spared to make them impregnable. By the construction of the forts an immense amount of money was put into circulation, which necessarily contributed to the development of many industries.

As the traveller approaches Havana to-day the old castle walls are the most curious thing which greets him, for within those walls has originated many a story of suffering, cruelty, and barbarism. As you gaze upon those walls a ship's officer may stand by your side and tell you, as he points to the towering light-house, a sad story of how the builder of that light--an Englishman, I believe he was--so pleased his Spanish masters that they, jealous that he might impart the secret of his work to his countrymen or build for them another such light, confined him in one of the dungeons and put out his eyes.

When I sailed by that huge fortress for the first time, and a fellow-passenger jokingly pointed out a little square window which he designated as opening into my future cell, I did not think how near his prophecy would be realized. But El Morro is not designed to hold criminals. By criminals I mean men who have sinned against their fellow-beings, men who have robbed and murdered--in fact, have not lived up to the golden rule to do unto others as they would have others do unto them. But men, and even boys, who are suspected of not being in favor of Spain's rule in the island of Cuba, these are called political prisoners, and Morro awaits them. And so I became a political prisoner too. And not till I was finally bound by the arms and marched before soldiers, who held me by a rope as though I was some sort of domesticated animal, did I remember that little window in Morro's walls, and wonder if that really was going to be the prison-barred window from which I could watch the ships bound home. But no; they put me in a cell with sixteen Cubans, who one and all greeted me as though I were a friend come to bring them news and consolation. I did see the other side of that little window, however, and that was when they took me before the judge and gave me a trial.

The Spanish have a queer way of trying folks, according to our notion. They do not take you into a big court-room full of people, where there is a judge and a jury and a prosecuting attorney, and where your accusers are brought before you and made to tell all they know, and if they tell something they don't know, you have the right to question them and prove that they are not telling the truth. But they send you into a little room, where a prosecuting officer examines you all by himself, and a soldier writes down what you say. And then your trial becomes something like a simple sum in arithmetic. Some one must swear that you have done wrong, and then if you get one witness besides yourself who swears that you did not commit the wrong, then your two statements count against the government's one, and so it goes. If the government produces six witnesses you must produce seven; and then again the officer who takes you into the little room is very powerful, for a great deal depends upon just how he makes out the papers in your case, and he has a hand very susceptible to Spanish gold. So it becomes very easy for a suspect to get off (if he is given a trial), and the government knows this; so instead of giving their political prisoners a trial, unless they are sure of convicting them, they keep them shut up in Morro Castle. They gave me a trial because our government at Washington demanded it, and as by their simple methods they were unable to find out what I had been doing, they were obliged to let me go.

ODD INDIAN SPORTS.

BY M. W. GIBSON.

It is not of bows and arrows that I wish to tell in this paper, nor of lacrosse and shinny--games of Indian origin with which most boys are familiar--but of other sports with which our copper-colored friends amuse themselves, and which, I presume, few readers have witnessed.

_Spinning Stones._--This is a sport that, as a youth, I often watched the boys of the Winnebago tribe play upon the frozen surface of Wisconsin lakes and rivers. A number of smooth stones, usually three, as round as could be found, and about the size of hens' eggs, were placed in a bunch on the smooth ice. A whip, made of two or three buckskin thongs fastened to a handle three feet long, was swung slowly and brought down upon the ice with a gentle swish, so that the lashes might curl round the stones.

Then a swift, deft jerk, so delicately applied as not to scatter the stones, sent them spinning. When once the stones commenced to rotate, the swing and the jerk were gradually quickened, growing faster and faster, until the two motions became merged in one, and the player settled down to a steady stroke that made the stones hum like so many tops. These Indian lads could keep a bunch of stones spinning like this for ten minutes at a time, without allowing one of them to get away. I used to think they must have inherited their skill in this sport, for I could never acquire the art, though I tried a hundred times.

I could start the stones spinning easily enough, but before they fairly began to hum one or two, if not the whole three, would whiz off, each in its own direction, beyond the reach of my whip.

The sport seems to require a peculiar drawing stroke of the whip that I could never acquire.

_The Snow-dart._--Another sport, in which I approached a little nearer to the skill of these same Indian boys, was that of throwing the snow-dart. The dart was a perfectly straight piece of hickory about five feet long, made three-cornered, and rounded up at one end. It was about an inch wide and half as thick, and was thrown with the flat side up. It had to be made with the greatest care and polished as smooth as glass. It was always a marvel to me how the Indians, with no other tools than a hatchet and knife, could make these little hickory flyers so perfectly. It was wonderful, too, to see how far these Winnebago youths could send one of them. Selecting a level stretch of snow, as upon a frozen river or lake, and where the surface was somewhat hardened by thawing and freezing, the players would stand at a great distance apart. One of them would take the dart by its middle, lightly balance it between his thumb and the two first fingers, and with a strong underhand throw launch the shaft toward his opponent.

If the snow was just soft enough to allow the sharp under edge of the dart to sink slightly into its surface, and thus hold it straight upon its course, then the sport was at its best.

_The Grass Game of the Digger Indians of California._--I first saw it played in the Russian River Valley, a great hop-growing region, where, at the close of the picking season, these Indians, to the number of two or three hundred, gather to feast upon watermelons and other good things, and to indulge in pony-races, foot-races, wrestling-matches, shinny, and other games for several days in succession. I had hard work to make my way through the crowd that pressed around a large circular enclosure made of tall willow bushes stuck in the ground where the game was going on. The players, four in number, were men grown, and squatted on their knees, two on one side of the enclosure, facing the other two on the opposite side. On a third side, and equally distant from both sets of players, sat the umpire. Each player had a little pile of dry grass in front of him; but only the two on one side made use of the grass at the same time, for the game is but an elaborate form of "hide the pencil" that every school-boy is quite familiar with, and while the players on one side did the hiding those on the other did the guessing.

To begin the game the player takes a little round stick about three-quarters of an inch in diameter, sharpened at each end, and about two inches and a half long. This he holds up in plain view of his opponent on the opposite side of the enclosure, whose keen eyes follow every movement as the player takes up handful after handful of the grass in front of him and winds it about the stick until he has formed a ball perhaps as large as his head. During this performance the player works himself into a frenzy of excitement, and makes all manner of frantic endeavors to "rattle" his adversary. Twisting and squirming about, he bends his body in all sorts of contortions. Time and again he pretends to pluck the little stick out of the ball he is forming, and hide it under a knee or a foot. He tosses the ball high in the air, then from hand to hand, then into the air again, and catches it behind his back. Now his chant is low and soft, his movements slow and measured; then higher and higher he pitches his voice, and faster and faster become his motions, until one can scarcely see his hands as they dart about in a cloud of flying grass.

Presently, at a signal from the umpire, he drops the ball of grass in front of him, and holds his closed hands behind his back.

Slowly his adversary extends his left arm as if grasping a bow, and raising his bent right arm to the level of his eye, as if drawing an arrow upon an imaginary enemy, with the forefinger of his left hand he points to the exact spot in which he expects to find the little stick. Every breath is hushed, and a deathlike silence prevails as he points steadily for a moment, then lets his right hand fly back against his chest with a hollow thud, as if he had let fly an arrow.

With a wild yell, in which every spectator joins, the player then produces the little stick--from the ball of grass, from under a knee or a foot, or from one of his closed palms, as the case may be. If he has been cunning enough to deceive the sharp eye of his opponent, the stakes are his; but if the guesser correctly locates the stick, the umpire throws to him the string of wampum, or whatever the stake may be. The sticks are then thrown across to the opposite players, and the game goes on.

THE VOYAGE OF THE "RATTLETRAP."

BY HAYDEN CARRUTH.

III.

Our first night in the Rattletrap passed without further incident--that is, the greater part of it passed, though Ollie declared that it lacked a good deal of being all passed when we got up. The chief reason for our early rise was Old Blacky, a member of our household (or perhaps wagonhold) not yet introduced in this history. Old Blacky was the mate of Old Browny, and the two made up our team of horses. Old Browny was a very well behaved, respectable old nag, extremely fond of quiet and oats. He invariably slept all night, and usually much of the day; he was a fit companion for our dog. It was the firm belief of all on board that Old Browny could sleep anywhere on a fairly level stretch of road without stopping.

But Old Blacky was another sort of beast. He didn't seem to require any sleep at all. What Old Blacky wanted was food. He loved to sit up all night and eat, and keep us awake. He seldom ever lay down at night, but would moon about the camp and blunder against things, fall over the wagon-tongue, and otherwise misbehave. Sometimes when we camped where the grass was not just to his liking, he would put his head into the wagon and help himself to a mouthful of bed-quilt or a bite of pillow. He was little but an appetite mounted on four legs, and next to food he loved a fight. Besides the name of Old Blacky, we also knew him as the Blacksmith's Pet; but this will have to be explained later on.

On this first morning, just as it was becoming light in the east, Old Blacky began to make his toilet by rubbing his shoulder against one corner of the wagon. As he was large and heavy, and rubbed as hard as he could, he soon had the wagon tossing about like a boat; and as the easiest way out of it, we decided to get up. It was cool and dewy, with the larger stars still shining faintly. We found Jack under the wagon. Ollie stirred him up, and said,

"See any varmints in the night, Uncle Jack?"

"Yes," answered Jack, as he unrolled himself from his blanket. "Or at least I felt one. That disgraceful Old Blacky nibbled at my ear twice. The first time I thought it was nothing less than a bear."

"Did he disturb Snoozer?"

"I guess nothing ever disturbs Snoozer. He never moved all night. How's the firewood department, Ollie?"

"All right," replied Ollie. "Got up enough last night. Nothing to do this morning but rest."

"Then build the fire while I get breakfast."

This pleased Ollie, and he soon had a good fire going. I caught Old Blacky, who had started off to walk around the lake, woke up Old Browny, who was sleeping peacefully with his nose resting on the ground, quieted the pony, who was still suspicious, with a few pats on the neck, and gave them all their oats. Soon the rest of us also had our breakfast, including Snoozer, who seemed to wake up by instinct, and after waiting a little for somebody to come and stretch him, stretched himself, and began waving his tail to attract our attention to his urgent need of food.

"Before we get back home that dog will want us to feed him with a spoon," said Jack.

It was only a little while after sunrise when we were off for another day's voyage. We were headed almost due south, and all that day and the three or four following (including Sunday, when we staid in camp), we did not change our general direction. We were aiming to reach the town of Yankton, where we intended to cross the Missouri River and turn to the west in Nebraska. The country through which we travelled was much of it prairie, but more was under cultivation, and the houses of settlers were numerous. The land on which wheat or other small grains had been grown was bare, but as we got further south we passed great fields of corn, some of it standing almost as high as the top of our wagon-cover.

For much of the way we were far from railroads and towns, and got most of our supplies of food from the settlers whose houses we passed or, indeed, sighted, since the pony proved as convenient for making landings as Jack had predicted she would. Ollie usually went on these excursions after milk and eggs and such like foods. The different languages which he encountered among the settlers somewhat bewildered him, and he often had hard work in making the people he found at the houses understand what he wanted. There were many Norwegians among the settlers, and the third day we passed through a large colony of Russians, saw a few Finns, and heard of some Icelanders who lived around on the other side of a lake.

"It wouldn't surprise me," said Ollie one day, "to find the man in the moon living here in a sod house."

Perhaps a majority--certainly a great many--of all these people lived in houses of this kind. Ollie had never seen anything of the sort before, and he became greatly interested in them. The second day we camped near one for dinner.

"You see," said Jack, "a man gets a farm, takes half his front yard and builds a house with it. He gains space, though, because the place he peels in the yard will do for flower-beds, and the roof and sides of his house are excellent places to grow radishes, beets, and similar vegetables."

"Why not other things besides radishes and beets?" asked Ollie.

"Oh, other things would grow all right, but radishes and beets seem to be the natural things for sod-house growing. You can take hold of the lower end and pull 'em from the inside, you know, Ollie."

"I don't believe it, Uncle Jack," said Ollie, stoutly.

"Ask the rancher," answered Jack. "If you're ever at dinner in a sod house, and want another radish, just reach up and pull one down through the roof, tops and all. Then you're sure they're fresh. I'd like to keep a summer boarding-house in a sod house. I'd advertise 'fresh vegetables pulled at the table.'"

"I'm going to ask the man about sod houses," returned Ollie. He went up to where the owner of the house was sitting outside, and said,

"Will you please tell me how you make a sod house?"

"Yes," said the man, smiling. "Thinking of making one?"

"Well, not just now," replied Ollie. "But I'd like to know about them. I might want to build one--sometime," he added, doubtfully.

"Well," said the man, "it's this way: First we plough up a lot of the tough prairie sod with a large plough called a breaking-plough, intended especially for ploughing the prairie the first time. This turns it over in a long, even, unbroken strip, some fourteen or sixteen inches wide and three or four inches thick. We cut this up into pieces two or three feet long, take them to the place where we are building the house, on a stone-boat or a sled, and use them in laying up the walls in just about the same way that bricks are used in making a brick house. Openings are left for the doors and windows, and either a shingle or a sod roof put on. If it's sod, rough boards are first laid on poles, and then sods put on them like shingles. I've got a sod roof on mine, you see."

Ollie was looking at the grass and weeds growing on the top and sides of the house. They must have made a pretty sight when they were green and thrifty earlier in the season, but they were dry and withered now.

"Do you ever have prairie fires on your roofs?" asked Ollie, with a smile.

"Oh, they do burn off sometimes," answered the man. "Catch from the chimney, you know. Did you ever see a hay fire?"

"No."

"Come inside and I'll show you one."

In the house, which consisted of one large room divided across one end by a curtain, Ollie noticed a few chairs and a table, and opposite the door a stove which looked very much like an ordinary cook-stove, except that the place for the fire was rather larger. Back of it stood a box full of what seemed to be big hay rope. The man's wife was cooking dinner on the stove.

"Here's a young tenderfoot," said the man, "who's never seen a hay fire."

"Wish I never had," answered the woman.

The man laughed. "They're hardly as good as a wood fire or a coal fire," he said to Ollie, "but when you're five hundred miles, more or less, from either wood or coal they do very well." The man took off one of the griddles and put in another "stick" of hay. Then he handed one to Ollie, who was surprised to find it almost as heavy as a stick of wood. "It makes a fairly good fire," said the man. "Come outside and I'll show you how to twist it."

They went out to a haystack near by, and the man twisted a rope three or four inches in diameter, and about four feet long. He kept hold of both ends till it was wound up tight, then he brought the ends together, and it twisted itself into a hard two-strand rope in the same way that a bit of string will do when similarly treated. There was quite a pile of such twisted sticks on the ground. "You see," said the man, "in this country, instead of splitting up a pile of fuel we just twist up one." Ollie bade the man good-by, took another look at the queer house, and came down to the wagon.

"So you saw a hay-stove, did you?" said Jack. "I could have told you all about 'em. I once staid all night with a man who depended on a hay-stove for warmth. It was in the winter. Talk about appetites! I never saw such an appetite as that stove had for hay. Why, that stove had a worse appetite than Old Blacky. It devoured hay all the time, just as Old Blacky would if he could; and even then its stomach always seemed empty. The man twisted all of the time, and I fed it constantly, and still it was never satisfied."

"How did you sleep?" asked Ollie.

"Worked right along in our sleep--like Old Browny," answered Jack.

The last day before reaching Yankton was hot and sultry. The best place we could find to camp that night was beside a deserted sod house on the prairie. There was a well and a tumble-down sod stable. There were dark bands of clouds low down on the southeastern horizon, and faint flashes of lightning.

"It's going to rain before morning," I said. "Wonder if it wouldn't be better in the sod house?"

We examined it, but found it in poor condition, so decided not to give up the wagon. "The man that lived there pulled too many radishes and parsnips and carrots and such things into it, and then neglected to hoe his roof and fill up the holes," said Jack. "Besides, Old Blacky will have it rubbed down before morning. When I sleep in anything that Old Blacky can get at, I want it to be on wheels so it can roll out of the way."

We went to bed as usual, but at about one o'clock we were awakened by a long rolling peal of thunder. Already big drops of rain were beginning to fall. Ollie and I looked out, and found Jack creeping from under the wagon.

"That's a dry-weather bedroom of mine," he observed, "and I think I'll come upstairs."

The flashes of lightning followed each other rapidly, and by them we could see the horses. Old Browny was sleeping, and Old Blacky eating, but the pony stood with head erect, very much interested in the storm. Jack helped Snoozer into the wagon, and came in himself. We drew both ends of the cover as close as possible, lit the lantern, and made ourselves comfortable, while Jack took down his banjo and tried to play. Jack always tried to play, but never quite succeeded. But he made a considerable noise, and that was better than nothing.