3-086-441 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Spanish-American War: the rainy season in Cuba - in the country, 1898. 'People who live in the temperate zone have no idea what rain means in the tropics. It begins not with a gentle drizzle, that may change into a downpour for perhaps a few days...The volume of water thus precipitated for weeks and months is stupendous, and the intense solar heat, converting it into hot steam and mist, induces the most luxuriant vegetable life. Rapid growth and rapid decay are the result. The roads become impassable, mire and swamp taking their place, while traffic or transport becomes well-nigh impossible. A path cut through the forest today will be choked up by the rapid growth of thicket a week afterwards. It is only the direst necessity that will induce the traveller to undertake a journey. Aided by two or three sturdy natives armed with their machetes (a huge knife, half cutlass), to cut a small path through the frightful tangle of the undergrowth, he makes but slow and painful progress. A huge cloud of steam and hot mist surrounds him, the fever fiend, lurking in every shrub and blade of grass, lying in wait for him.' From "Illustrated London News", 1898.