be better treated than they have been here."

I was touched and gratified to see the interest and sympathy excited by the work of the Red Cross in all who came in contact with it, from the commodore of the fleet to the poorest fisherman. The captains of the monitor Puritan and the auxiliary cruiser Panther offered us the use of their swift steam-launches in the work of distributing food; the representative of the New York "Sun" followed their example; the marines on the Panther doffed their caps to our boats as we passed, and even a poor Key West fisherman pulled over to us in his skiff, as we lay alongside a Spanish vessel, and gave us two large, lobster-like crawfish, merely to show us, in the only way he could, his affectionate sympathy and good will. Mr. Cobb offered him some of the tobacco that we were distributing among the Spanish sailors, but he refused to take it, saying: "I didn't bring the fish to you to beg tobacco, or for money, but just because I wanted to help a little. I hoped to get more, but these were all I could catch."

One touch of kindness makes all the world kin. Even the engineer of the New York "Sun's" naphtha-launch gave his cherished pipe to a sailor on a Spanish vessel who had none, and when one of his mates remonstrated with him, saying, "You're not going to give him your own brier-wood pipe!" he replied, with a shamefaced smile: "Yes, poor devil! he can't get one away out here. I can buy another ashore."

Late in the afternoon we made a second round of all the Spanish ships to collect their letters, and then returned to the State of Texas. Mr. Cobb that same evening submitted the open letters to the United States prize-court for approval, and I made an arrangement with Mr. E. F. Knight, war correspondent of the London "Times," who was just starting for Havana, to take the Cuban letters with him and mail them there. The letters for Spain were sent to the National Red Cross of Portugal.

CHAPTER III

ON THE EDGE OF WAR

Until the illuminating search-light of war was turned upon the island of Key West, it was, to the people of the North generally, little more than a name attached to a small, arid coral reef lying on the verge of the Gulf Stream off the southern extremity of Florida. Few people knew anything definitely about it, and to nine readers out of ten its name suggested nothing more interesting or attractive than Cuban filibusters, sponges, and cigars. In less than a month, however, after the outbreak of hostilities, it had become the headquarters, as well as the chief coaling-station, of two powerful fleets; the news-distributing center for the whole Cuban coast; the supply-depot to which perhaps a hundred vessels resorted for water, food, and ammunition; the home station of all the newspaper despatch-boats cruising in West Indian waters; the temporary headquarters of more than a hundred newspaper correspondents and reporters, and the most advanced outpost of the United States on the edge of war. In view of the importance which the place had at that time, as well as the importance which it must continue to have, as our naval base in Cuban waters, a description of it may not be wholly without interest.

The island on which the city of Key West stands forms one of the links in a long, curving chain of shoals, reefs, and keys extending in a southwesterly direction about a hundred miles from the extreme end of the peninsula of Florida. It is approximately six miles long, has an average width of one mile, and resembles a little in shape a huge comma, with the city of Key West for its head and a diminishing curve of low, swampy chaparral and mangrove-bushes for a tail. The shallow bay of pale-green water between the head and the tail on the concave side of the comma is known as "the bight." It is the anchorage of the sponging-fleet, and is the eastern limit of settlement on that side of the island. Beyond it are sandy flats and shallow, salt-water lagoons, shut in by a dense growth of leather-leaved bushes and low, scrubby China-berry, sea-grape, and Jamaica-apple trees. The highest part of the Key is occupied by the city, and the highest part of the city is the low bluff on its western side, where the slender shaft of the lighthouse stands at a height of fifteen or eighteen feet above the level of tide-water. Owing to its geographical position in a semi-tropical sea, just north of the Gulf Stream and within the zone of the northeast trade-winds, Key West has a climate of remarkable mildness and equability. Twenty years' observations show that its lowest monthly mean of temperature is 70° F. in January, and its highest 84° in August—an annual range of only 14°. Between the years 1886 and 1896 the highest temperature recorded was 92°, and the lowest 40°—a range of only 52° between maximum and minimum in a period of ten years. New York and Chicago often have a greater variation of temperature than this in the course of ten days.

Equability, however, is not the only noteworthy characteristic of the Key West climate. It is also remarkable for its sunniness in winter and its breeziness at all seasons of the year. The average number of cloudy days there is only sixty-four per annum, and between October and April the sun often shines, day after day, in a cloudless sky, for weeks at a time. But even more constant and continuous than the sunshine are the cool breezes from the foam-crested waters of the Atlantic, which temper the heat of the almost perpetual summer. From the reports of the Weather Bureau it appears that the average number of calm days at Key West is only ten per annum. In 1895 only three days were calm, and in 1894 there were only twenty-seven hours, of day or night, in which there was not breeze enough to ripple, at least, the pale-green water of the harbor. For all practical purposes, therefore, the sea-breeze at Key West may be regarded as perennial and incessant. It varies in strength, of course, from day to day and from hour to hour; but in the two weeks that I spent there it was never strong enough to be unpleasant in the city, nor to necessitate the reefing of small sail-boats in the comparatively open and unsheltered bay.

The average annual rainfall on the island is about thirty-nine inches, and nearly the whole of this precipitation is confined to the so-called "rainy season," between May and November, when showers fall, now and then, at irregular intervals of from three to ten days. For their fresh water the inhabitants depend entirely upon this rainfall, which is carefully collected and saved in large roof-covered cisterns. There are a few wells on the island, but the water in them is generally brackish, or is so impregnated with lime and earthy salts as to be unfit either for drinking or for irrigation. To sum up briefly, the climate of Key West may be roughly described as mild and dry in winter, warm but showery in summer, and breezy and sunny at all seasons.

In this geographical and climatic environment there has grown up on the island an interesting but rather sleepy and unprogressive city of twenty-two thousand inhabitants. The most important of the elements that go to make up its population are, first, whites from the United States, who are chiefly engaged in shipping or commerce; second, Cubans of mixed blood, employed, for the most part, in the cigar factories; third, immigrants from the Bahamas, known as "conchs," who devote themselves mainly to fishing, sponging, and wrecking; and, fourth, negroes from America and the West Indian Islands, who turn their hands to anything they can find to do, from shoveling coal to diving into the clear water of the bay after the pennies or nickels thrown by Northern tourists from the deck of the Mascotte or the Olivette. Nothing in the shape of fruit, grain, or vegetables is raised on the island for export, and the greater part