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 CUBA CUBEBS 555 sembly of representatives of the centre " as- sumed its functions in Camaguey, and the first act of the new government was the abolition of slavery. In the same month the Villas dis- trict rose against Spanish rule ; and the insur- gents, who numbered over 7,000 men under Gen. Kuloff, a Pole, were successful in several engagements. A national convention was held at Guaimaro, April 10, at which were pres- ent Cespedes, chief of the provisional gov- 'ernment of the Eastern department, the mem- bers of the Camagueyan assembly, the deputies from Villa Clara, and representatives from Santo Espiritu, Holguin, and Jiguani. A con- stitution was adopted. The republic was di- vided into four states, Oriente, Camaguey, Las Villas, and Occidente. Full legislative powers were given to the chamber of representatives, to which was intrusted the nomination of a president and of a commander-in-chief of the army. Both of these officers were to hold their position at the will of the chamber, which had the power to remove them with- out previous indictment. The flag adopted was the one which had been unfurled by Agilero and Lopez. On April 11 Cespedes was elected president and Manuel Quesada commander-in-chief. On April 18 a Spanish force of 200 men was surrounded and most of the number were killed or captured. Gen. Valmaseda had meanwhile issued a proclama- tion decreeing that every male over 15 years of age found in the country away from his home, without justifiable reason, should be shot ; that every house on which a white flag was not displayed should be burned ; and that all women and children found alone on their farms should be removed willingly or by force, either to Bayamo or Jiguani. In May two important landings were made in aid of the insurgents : one under Rafael Quesada, in Ca- maguey, of men, arms, and ammunition from the steamer Salvador; the other under Gen. Thomas Jordan, a graduate of West Point and an ex-officer of the confederate service, at Mayari, of 175 officers and men, arms and am- munition for 2,600 men, and 10 pieces of ar- tillery, from the steamer Perit. The former reached the interior without resistance; the latter was attacked at Canalito and again at El Ramon, but repulsed the enemy and reached his destination. The command of the army of the Oriente was at once assigned to Gen. Jordan. Before the close of the year Gen. Quesada, having demanded extraordinary pow- ers, was deposed by congress, and Gen. Jordan appointed commander-in-chief. On Jan. 1, 1870, the latter defeated a Spanish force under Gen. Puello at Las Minas de Guaimaro. In August of the same year the United States government offered to Spain their good offices for a settlement of the strife. Terms for the cession of the island to the Cubans were pro- posed by Mr. Fish, the United States secretary of state ; but Spain declined the offer. The volunteers having in July expelled Capt. Gen. Dulce, Gen. Caballero de Rodas was sent from Spain to replace him, together with a reenforcement of 80,000 men. In December De Rodas was superseded by Valmaseda at the dictation of the volunteers. On Nov. 27, 1871, eight medical students were condemned by a court martial of volunteers for alleged desecra- tion of the grave of a Spanish editor, and shot. In December Valmaseda issued a proclamation giving notice that every insurgent taken after Jan. 15, 1872, would be shot, and all surrender- ing after that date be sentenced to perpetual imprisonment. In 1872 Valmaseda was replaced ad interimby Ceballos, and in 1873 definitively succeeded by Gen. Pieltain, who in July, 1873, sent to President Cespedes to offer peace on condition that Cuba should remain a state of the Spanish republic; but the offer was de- clined. In November, 1873, Gen. Pieltain was superseded by Gen. Jovellar ; and in December Cespedes was deposed from the presidency of the Cuban republic and succeeded by Salvador Cisneros. There have been sent to Cuba from Spain since October, 1868, 80,000 soldiers, of whom not more than 12,000 survive. Accord- ing to official reports forwarded from Madrid by the United States minister, 13,600 Cubans had been killed in battle up to August, 1872, besides 43,500 prisoners whom the Spanish minister admitted to have been put to death. In the first three years of the war, up to Oc- tober, 1871, Spain had expended, according to official statements, $70,339,658 70. No au- thentic statement has been made since. CUBE (Gr. *{;/3of, a die), in geometry, a solid body terminated by six square equal faces; occupying among bodies a place analogous to that of the square among surfaces. The prob- lem of the duplication of the cube, or of con- structing a cube of twice the volume of a given cube, is celebrated in the history of science. It occupied geometers in the time of Plato ; and it was a Greek tradition that once during a pestilence the priestess at Delos had respond- ed that in order to appease the gods her altar must be doubled. The altar was cubical, and a new one was built whose sides were of twice the dimensions of the old one. The priestess responded that her command had been wrongly interpreted, and from that time the geometri- cal duplication of cubic figures was a constant problem, like the quadrature of the circle. The cubature of solids, or the reduction of any body to a cubic form of equal volume, is performed by first reducing the given volume to one of the geometrical figures the law of whose curvature is known, as the parallelopipedon, cylinder, cone, or sphere. In arithmetic and algebra, a cube is a number formed by raising another number to its third power ; thus, 27 is the cube of 3, being equal to 3x3x3. The number which is thus multiplied to make a cube is called the cube root. CCBEBS, the berries of piper cubeba, a plant growing wild in Java, Penang, and probably other parts of the East Indies. The berries