THE SPANISH-AMERICAN WAR. 212 must shift for themselves as best they may.

When the time comes to halt, the menbivouac in a torrent of hot rain, or in the deadly mist that rises from field and forest under the hot sky when the rain ceases for awhile. In such conditions only the shortest of marches could be undertaken,a small column going out for a few hours from a fortified post, and possibly meeting and exchanging fire with a rebelband, with the result of few or reinforcements could be hurried up by rail. The Marshal further constructed a large number of blockhouses to protect bridges andimportant junctions on the railways. But the drawback to all this passive defence was that an enormous number of men were shut up in isolated posts, and the attempt to guard hundreds of miles of barbedwire fences and of railway lines resulted inevitably in the defence being very weak on many points, so that the rebels continually got across thetrochas, cut down the telegraphs, and tore up the railways. In order to force the field hands to join them, the insurgents- in the earlier stages of the war frequently set fire tothe sugarcanes and the houses and stores onthe plantations, so MartinezCampos began to post here and there little garrisons to protect the fields from these ravages. No wonder that by the end of the summer, when the time came to act. he had available for operations no casualties, and aclaimforvictory from both sides.

Martinez Campos knew Cuba, andhe spent the rainy summer in preparations for an autumn campaign. Everything wasin confusion when he arrived. He had to begin the organisation of the local defences from the very beginning. The t wotrochas(literally, "ditches"), or fortified lines extending across the island,which he had made a feature in his operations at the close of the Ten Years' War, had been allowed to gotoruins. Martinez Campos be-CUBAN TYPES gan to reconstruct them, and gradually the line of forts and blockhouses, with a broad belt of wire entanglements and other obstacles betweenthem, stretched from sea to sea across the island, the western trocha from the bay of Mariel on the north to the bay of Majana on the south coast, and the eastern along a line drawn through Jucaro and Moron. The object of the trochas was to divide the island into three districts for military operations, preventing the rebels in east, centre, or west from co-operating with each other, and sending by signal to the stronger Spanish posts news of any attempt to pass the lines, so that against the rebels only a very small proportion of the 70,000 men that nominally formed the army of Spain in Cuba.

At last (in October) he took the field,making now one, now another, of the fortified coast towns the base of operations for a short expedition against the rebels. But it was rarely that there was anythingbut aninconclusive skirmish. The Spaniards, toiling by narrowpaths through the bush, were fired on from coverby foes who disappeared when an attempt was madeto close with them. The rebels, very wisely,onl) when numbers and position were on their side. After a few days the Spanish column would