Page:Messages of the President of the United States on the Relations of the United States to Spain (1898).djvu/83

 54 attacked, the growing cane burned. This precludes further attempts to grind, as men can not be induced to work while the insurgents roam at will over the country.

Consul.

Sagua la Grande, February 17, 1898.

I beg to submit the following:

It is proper that I inform the Department that the ravage of smallpox has reached a point where the physicians, few in number, without proper means of treating, as well as no nurses, can not cope with it. I have cabled our dispatch agent in New York for an additional supply of virus.

I was informed by the mayor of this city only yesterday that he was just in receipt of a communication from the government of the province stating no funds to feed the starving were obtainable. In reply to my query why he did not send a number of them to the country, he stated that the military commander refused to grant this permission.

I am, etc.,

Consul.

Sagua la Grande, March 12, 1898.

With reference to the distribution to and requirement for the concentrados in my consular district, I beg to submit the following for the information of the Department:

From the 15th of last month, through cash donations made to this consulate, direct, through personal appeal, I cared for 1,200 persons. By the 1st instant these contributions increased so as to enable the committee to increase the relief list to 2,000. This has been maintained until now; but as the Fern, with 35 tons, should arrive to-morrow, the Sagua relief can be continued.

About a week since I received the first shipment of supplies, about twenty tons being sent from Havana under direction of the Red Cross branch in that city. All this I distributed among ten of the twenty-two towns I had managed to investigate, using none for Sagua; there being five others not yet looked into out of the twenty-seven cities and towns in my zone. I believe that with the assistance of a very able local committee, that I have this relief reduced to a kind of system so as to avoid as little abuse as possible, and at the same time care for the most deserving.

For instance, about sixty days ago, the mayors of these towns furnished, by request, this office with the number they claimed as actually destitute in their several municipal districts, which footed up over 50,000 persons. Estimating a decrease from death of 10,000, would leave, say 40,000.