Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 20, Number 56, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 March 1899 — Notes from Cuba. [ARTICLE]

Notes from Cuba.

Havana custom house receipts on Feb. 15 amounted to $41,694. The Sport is now Havana’s leading and most popular club. It occupies the building of the former Spanish Circulo Militar. Northern tourists are arriving in Cuba at the rate of a hundred a day, and the leading Havana hotels are already overcrowded. Guillermo Dolz, a brother of the late Spanish autonomist minister of public works for Cuba, has been appointed by Governor General Brooke to the civil governorship of Plnar del Rio province. The men of the Seventh army corps are to have a new form of amusement near their camp. If is a good old American circus, which Mr. Stickney, the owner and manager, has imported from the States. Some of the trumpeters of the Seventh army corps have developed a liking for the Spanish bugles, and it is no uncommon thing now out in the Marianao camps to hear the high, shrill notes of a Spanish bugle sounding an American call. El Occidente, a Guanajay newspaper, urges Cuban land holders not to sell their property* to Americans, and insists that the rapid acquirement of Cuban estates by American and foreign syndicates is the greatest menace to future independence. The officers of the Third Nebraska have leased a dwelling house on the Marianao road, near their camp in Ceiba, and fitted it out as a club. It is a delightful resort, and is well patronized by the officers of the Nebraska regiment and their friends. Maj. Gen. Brooke governs Cuba from a little wooden hotel, the Trotcha, in the suburb Velado, about two miles from the city boundary proper. He has no sentinels, no guards saluting, no secret service men in plain clothes protecting his person. A collection of postage stamps is nowadays not complete without the “mourning” stamp recently issued by Spain. It is jet black, is marked on one side in white letters, “5 cent,” and on the other, “Impto. de Guerra” (“war tax”) and 1898-’99. The stamp is affixed to all domestic letters as a “war tax,” in addition to the regular postage stamp, otherwise that letter “doesn’t go.” American tourists may no longer have the pleasure of visiting the wreck of the Maine in Havana bay, Commodore Cromwell having by a late decree forbidden boats to approach the remains, upon pain of $5 fine, and of SSO fine to occupants thereof. Gov. Sayer of Texas has signed a bill which provides for the immediate appointment of a State tax commissioner, to revise the revenue laws of the Stat% with the view to getting one enactment to cover the entire occupation and other tax systems of the State.