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THE FALL OF SANTIAGO 
 
THE 
 FALL OF SANTIAGO 
 
 THOMAS J. VIVIAN 
 
 Author of " With Dewey at Manila." 
 
 R. F. FENNO & COMPANY : 9 and ii E. 
 
 SIXTEENTH STREET : : NEW YORK 
 
 1898 
 
1 n ii Q 
 
 5936 
 
 Copyright, 1898 
 
 BY 
 
 R. F. FENNO & COMPANY 
 
 C09I 
 
 The Fall of Santiago 
 
 zntiago 
 
 1B9C5. 
 
 Ettt 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. PAGE 
 
 How Schley CLased Cervera's Fleet 5 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 How Hobson Sank the Merrimac 25 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 How the Marines Fought at Guantanamo 51 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 How Shafter Landed His Army at Daiquiri 72 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 How the Rough Riders Fought at La Guasima 95 
 
 CHAPTER VL 
 How the Army Marched to the Front 112 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 How El Caney Was Carried 132 
 
 CHAPTER VIIL ■ 
 How San Juan Was Stormed and Taken 155 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 How Schley Destroyed Cervera's Fleet 190 
 
 CHAPTER X. j 
 
 How Toral Surrendered More than was Asked for 227 
 
(.■opvright 
 
 '^lap sliovving tlie scene of the 
 The roads leading from Daitjuiri and biboney have been heavily lined, not t< 
 
y operations around Santiago. 
 
 te their importance as ways of travel, but, tor the purpose of identification. 
 
THE FALL OF SANTIAGO. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 HOW SCHLEY CHASED CERVERa's FLEET. 
 
 At the time that the great sea hunt for 
 Admiral Cervera's elusive fleet began, the condi- 
 tion of things specifically hinging on it was 
 just this : 
 
 There were three positive and five possible 
 parties in the hunt. The positive parties were 
 Schley's Flying Squadron, then a resting one at 
 Hampton Eoads; Sampson's Blockading Fleet, 
 off Havana; and Admiral Cervera's Cape Verde 
 Squadron, so called because at the outbreak of 
 hostilities the Spanish ships constituting that 
 squadron were at the Cape Verde Islands, The 
 possibilities were Admiral Camara's fleet at 
 Cadiz and Admiral Villamil's squadron, concern- 
 ing whose exact location there existed much 
 doubt. Ever since the 25th of April, the date of 
 the declaration of war between the United States 
 and Spain, it was a self-evident strategical propo- 
 sition that no definite campaign in the West 
 
6 The Fall of Santiago. 
 
 Indies could be laid out and carried through 
 until an accounting had been raade with the 
 Spanish fleet or fleets. 
 
 In general: The blockade of Havana was estab- 
 lished; the presidential policy was esteemed 
 from the outside to be one of pacific waiting; 
 Admiral Dewey had destroyed the Spanish fleet 
 at Manila; and Spain was threatening to send a 
 heavy sea force against him in the hope of re- 
 gaining her power in the Orient. Troops were 
 gathering from every part of the United States 
 toward the fields of Ghickamauga and the blazing 
 sand spits and coral keys of Florida; the different 
 States had been called on to send their quota of 
 volunteers to the front; and the government 
 agents were busy all over the world buying war 
 ships and craft convertible into cruisers. 
 
 Such was the naval and military status when 
 late on the night of May 12 Commodore Schley 
 walked into his cabin on the Brooklyn with an 
 unopened dispatch in his hands, which dispatch 
 had just been brought out from Fortress Monroe. 
 An hour after, it being then exactly one a.m.. 
 May 13, a string of colored lights was displayed 
 from the flagship, "Be ready to put to sea at 
 daybreak." Evidently there were many wake- 
 ful eyes on the fleet, and no sooner had the com- 
 modore's signal gone up than a whole colony of 
 
The Fall of Santiago. 7 
 
 drug stores seemed to spring into being as the 
 colored lights were run up all around with the 
 answer "Signal understood. We will be ready. " 
 
 There was no more sleep that night on board 
 the fleet, and although they did not sail at day- 
 break, the executive officers made the effort of 
 their lives to do so. The laggards in this case 
 were the converted cruiser St. Paul and the 
 cruiser New Orleans which were coaling at New- 
 port News. The squadron waited, to the visible 
 heat and audible impatience of the commodore, 
 until half-past three in the afternoon, and then, 
 accompanied by a big collier, the Brooklyn, 
 Massachusetts, Texas, Minneapolis and Scorpion 
 sailed, leaving instructions for the St. Paul and 
 New Orleans to follow as quickly as they could. 
 
 Save for the delay there was jollity all over the 
 fleet, for though the men were not sure what 
 they were going to do, they were certain that 
 they were going to do something, and that they 
 had two hundred guns of the most modern type, 
 eighteen hundred officers and men, and seven 
 good vessels to do it with. 
 
 Next day, that is May 14, the squadron was off 
 Charleston and there it was found that the sealed 
 orders under which sail was made from Hamp- 
 ton Eoads, read only to put to sea at once and 
 proceed to Charleston, there to receive further 
 
8 The Fall of Santiago. 
 
 orders. It may be said here, and vrith much 
 appropriateness, that rarely for an instant was 
 there any evidence of indecision on the part of 
 those in control of the Santiago campaign and 
 that with few exceptions the plans that were made 
 were clear, were expressed to those who had to 
 discharge them with equal clearness, and carried 
 out as undeviatingly as the changing circum- 
 stances of war would permit by those in com- 
 mand of the operations on land and sea. At 
 Charleston the new orders were to proceed to 
 Havana with all expedition there to join forces 
 with Admiral Sampson, under whose command 
 two fast fleets would be made up for the Cervera 
 hunt. 
 
 But while the plans of the hunters were known 
 with some kind of definiteness those of the 
 quarry were decidedly nebulous. The Dons 
 were rich in what may be called the feint and 
 ambuscade of news. The Cape Verde Fleet had 
 sailed. It had not sailed. It was at the 
 Canaries. It was at Cadiz. These were some of 
 the sample reports. Of course, at Washington 
 data of a somewhat more definite character had 
 been gathered by trusted agents, but so wilj- and 
 uncertain, so full of dodges, turns, back-tracking 
 and unexpected dashes was Cervera at the last 
 that not the combined intelligence of the Secret 
 
Admiral Cevera. 
 
The Fall of Santiago. 9 
 
 Service branches of the War and Navy Depart- 
 ments and the untiring and omnipresent news- 
 paper men could always tell where Spain's great- 
 est of naval dodgers really was. 
 
 The facts that were patent were these. "When 
 the war broke out Cervera, as has been said, was 
 at St. Vincent in the Cape de Verde Islands. 
 Now these islands belong to Portugal and it was 
 intimated to Portugal by our State Department 
 that the presence of Cervera's fleet, coupled with 
 the ostentatious announcement that Spain in- 
 tended to gather at St. Vincent one of those 
 formidable armadas which have ever been her 
 pet embodiment of naval power, would seem to 
 indicate that the nation with which we were at 
 war was using the territory of a nation with 
 which we were at peace as a base of offensive 
 operations and we would like to know just what 
 Portugal's position in the matter was. In 
 answer to this demand Portugal's prime minister 
 cabled to the State Department at Washington, 
 April 26, that the Spanish flotilla would be given 
 forty-eight hours in which to leave St. Vincent. 
 
 When the forty-eight hours were up, however, 
 the Spanish flotilla was still at St. Vincent. 
 Then, on April 28, Portugal, in response to 
 another quiet but still more emphatic interroga- 
 tory from Washington as to her position, did 
 
10 The Fall of Santiago. 
 
 declare her neutrality, and Cervera, having in 
 this friendly leisure mobilized his fleet and 
 thoroughly provisioned and coaled it, soon after 
 steamed away with his black-painted warships. 
 But with the certainty of Cervera 's departure 
 ended the certainty of his whereabouts, and it 
 was from the latter date that the Cervera hunt 
 may be said to properly begin. 
 
 Would he sail back to Cadiz to join forces with 
 Camara? Would he sail to the Canaries, there 
 to wait until reinforced by Admiral Villamil with 
 his undefined fleet? Was he planning to inter- 
 cept the battleship Oregon on her great trip 
 around Cape Horn and crush her by force of 
 numbers? Would he make a dash for the North 
 Atlantic ports; reduce the summer cottages of 
 Newport to ruins; loot the Boston banks of their 
 millions; or, dashing down Long Island Sound, 
 lay Brooklyn waste and raze New York's sky 
 scrapers to the ground? Was Newport News, 
 with its yards and government supplies to be 
 captured? Was Charleston in danger or Key 
 West to be bombarded? Did the Spanish 
 admiral contemplate a flight across the Atlantic 
 to Porto Rico with a view of using that port as a 
 strong base for menace and attack? Would he 
 push on through the Carribean Sea and get into 
 the shelter of Cienfuegos, with its railroad to 
 
The Fall of Santiago. 11 
 
 Havana, and so bring new heart and supplies to 
 Governor-General Blanco; or would he make one 
 wild cut at the blockading squadron and try to 
 get into Havana itself? All of these proposi- 
 tions had to be considered and though some were 
 wild, none could be dismissed as impossible. 
 
 It may be asked why Cervera's fleet was con- 
 sidered such an important factor; why the pro- 
 gramme of the United States depended so much 
 on the disposal of the Cape Verde flotilla and 
 why the plan was not adopted to quietly wait 
 until Cervera's fleet materialized and then meet 
 and smash it. The answer is a plain one. 
 "When Cervera left St. Vincent his fleet consisted 
 of four first-class cruisers — the Vizcaya, the 
 Almirante Oquendo, the Cristobal Colon and the 
 Infanta Maria Teresa; and three torpedo boat 
 destroyers, the Furor, the Terror, and the 
 Pluton. Not such a formidable fleet, one might 
 imagine, considering the fact that Schley's flying 
 squadron included the Massachusetts, Texas, 
 Brooklyn, New Orleans, and Minneapolis; that 
 Sampson from his blockaders could make up a 
 fighting fleet consisting of the Iowa, Indiana, 
 New York, Amphitrite, Terror, Detroit, Mont- 
 gomery, and Marblehead; and that if he had 
 luck. Captain Clark could join these with the 
 Oregon, Marietta and Nictheroy. The potent 
 
12 The Fall of Santiago. 
 
 fact about Cervera's fleet, however, was its 
 homogeneity. It was all alike. In a collection 
 of fighting vessels, as in a collection of fighting 
 men, its unit of capability is its weak spot. 
 "When moving into action or retiring from one, 
 the fastest cruiser can only sail at the speed of 
 the slowest — that is, if there is to be any concert 
 of attack or retreat. The four cruisers of Cer- 
 vera were not only all alike in speed, they were 
 all alike in strength, in the disposition, art of 
 training and power of their batteries. The ton- 
 nage of the Cristobal Colon was G,840 while that 
 of the other three cruisers was exactly 6,890 for 
 each vessel. The Colon's batteries could throw 
 in one ton of metal at each volley, while the 
 volley of the other three was one and a quarter 
 tons each. The speed of each ship was tAventy 
 knots. 
 
 It follows, then, that the four cruisers might 
 practically be considered as one enormous 
 fighting machine, with equal power to strike, 
 speed to run, strength to resist and which, if 
 properly handled, would really be one of the most 
 formidable things afloat. It must not be inferred 
 from all this that there would be any hesitation 
 on the part of our fleet commanders to engage 
 Cervera as soon as found, but it must be under- 
 stood that Cervera afloat and unsmashed was a 
 menace of formidable proportions. 
 
Com. Wmfield Scott Schley. 
 
The Fall of Santiago. 13 
 
 Instructions Laving been received to proceed 
 to Key West, to Key "West Schley's S(iuadron 
 sailed. That scorched end of the United States 
 was reached on May 18 and next day the com- 
 modore was joined by Admiral Sampson and his 
 fleet. Sampson had been off on an errand of his 
 own and though it had been moderately success- 
 ful in one way, it had been a failure in another 
 and he was not in the most cheerful of moods 
 when Schley went to visit him. His double pur- 
 pose when he drew away from the blockading fleet 
 outside Havana had been to chase down Cervera, 
 and failing that, to put Porto Rico into such an 
 undefendable condition that the Spanish admiral 
 might not be able to use it as a harbor of refuge. 
 He did not engage the Spaniard and so on May 
 9 reported to Washington an inability to find 
 any trace of Spain's master in the art of hiding, 
 and announced his intention to bombard Porto 
 Eico. That intention he carried into partial 
 effect on the 12th of May, but of what was done 
 on that date and in that action it would be 
 too wide a parenthesis to speak here. 
 
 After thoroughly canvassing the situation and 
 as a result of the combined capital of information 
 possessed by the admiral and commodore and 
 furnished them from Washington, it was decided 
 that instead of combining the fleets for a further 
 
14 The Fall of Santiago. 
 
 sea hunt the vessels under command of Sampson 
 and Schley should be divided and two lines of pur- 
 suit followed. Sampson held that he had given 
 Porto Rico such a shaking up that it was in no 
 condition to afford anything except the shakiest 
 kind of support to Cervera; that the Spanish 
 admiral would not think of remaining there 
 •when once he discovered its condition ; and that 
 so much, therefore, in the twistings and dou- 
 blings of the pursued fleet might be eliminated. 
 There remained then, the dash on the Atlantic 
 ports, the endeavor to force the blockade of 
 Havana, the push ahead for a port on the 
 southern coast of Cuba or the double and return 
 flight to Cadiz. As to the ports on the southern 
 coast of Cuba there were only two which were 
 thought necessary of consideration — those of 
 Cienfuegos and Santiago. Of these the balance 
 of opinion was that everything was in favor of 
 Cervera's selection lighting upon Cienfuegos. 
 It lies right across from Havana on the southern 
 coast, has an excellent harbor, and, as has been 
 intimated, is within easy railroad connection 
 with the Cuban capital. Then, too, it was one 
 of the places on which a blockade had been set, 
 so that if the Spanish Admiral contemplated any 
 scheme of relief Cienfuegos was the best place 
 for its application. The fortifications of Cien- 
 
The Fall of Santiago. 15 
 
 fuegos -were not as formidable, it is true, as tliey 
 had been prior to May 14, when Commander 
 McCalla, with the cruisers Marblehead and Nash- 
 ville and the converted cruiser Windom, sent 
 one of the big guns there sprawling, rent the 
 forts at the harbor's entrance with four and 
 six-inch shells, and left things generallj' demoral- 
 ized after a three hours' administration of iron 
 and steel correctives. McCalla's object had been 
 to cut the cable between Cienfuegos and Man- 
 zanillo and the ripping bombardment, which 
 lasted from six to nine a.m. was inflicted because 
 the Spanish forts had fired on the American 
 boats while they were engaged in this enterprise. 
 Still, Cienfuegos ranked as a fortified and very 
 enticing haven for Cervera, and it was decided 
 that leaving Commodore Watson to continue the 
 blockade of Havana with his "mosquito fleet," 
 Schley should sail around the western end of 
 Cuba to that port, while Sampson was to sail 
 eastward down to the "Windward Passage, so as 
 to intercept Cervera should he try to make for 
 Havana and at the same time to trap him should 
 he have visited Porto Eico and found it unten- 
 able. 
 
 Commodore Schley sailed from Key West on 
 May 19, taking with him the Brooklyn, Texas, 
 Massachusetts, and Scorpion. These reached 
 
16 The Fall of Santiago. 
 
 &^ 
 
 Cienfuegos Sunday, May 22, and were there 
 joined by the Iowa, the cruiser Marblehead, the 
 torpedo boat Dupont, the gunboats Castine and 
 Eagle, and the collier Merrimac, the latter craft, 
 which was destined to become historical, having 
 arrived at eight o'clock on the morning of May 
 23 under the convoy of the Castine. "When 
 Cienfuegos was reached it was seen that much 
 work of reparation had been done on the forti- 
 fications at the harbor mouth, so much indeed 
 that even after the peppering which McCalla had 
 administered it would have been no easy task to 
 force a way past the batteries at Punta Colorado 
 on the one hand, and the much more important 
 fortification at the castle of Xagua on the other. 
 Many contradictory reports were brought the 
 commodore by Cuban scouts as to the presence 
 of Cervera in Cienfuegos, the general trend of 
 these reports, however, being that the Spanish 
 admiral had arrived and was safely ensconced 
 behind these fortifications. Schley was much 
 inclined to the opinion that he had run down 
 the Spanish admiral and had indeed prepared a 
 report to that effect when the little gunboat 
 Hawk, a converted yacht, brought such definite 
 news of Cervera being really at Santiago, that he 
 had to accept it as authoritative. He would 
 have started for Santiago there and then, but the 
 
Castle ot El Morro, the eastern guardian of the sea gateway to Santiago. 
 
The Fall of Santiago. 17 
 
 O" 
 
 question of coaling — the pivotal question in 
 naval proceedings nowadays — delayed him until 
 Tuesday. 
 
 With Schley at Cienfuegos preparing to run 
 down to Santiago to establish the accuracy' of the 
 Hawk's report; with Sampson cruising along the 
 northern coast of Cuba and watching the Win- 
 ward Passage, with the Yale and St. Louis, 
 auxiliary cruisers, scouting and watching for Cer- 
 vera at the Mona and Virgin Passages, and with 
 half a dozen other scouts steaming here and there 
 over the Atlantic and "West Indian seas, it will 
 be appropriate here to show how Cervera eluded 
 his pursuers. And as it happened, it was by one 
 of the strange fortunes of war that the exact 
 story came to light through the capture of the 
 flagship's log-book, as the Cristobal Colon lay a 
 battered and stranded hulk off Santiago's rocky 
 shore. 
 
 It will be remembered that Portugal informed 
 our government that Cervera had been instructed 
 to vacate his anchorage on April 26 with a forty- 
 eight hours time of grace, he having arrived there 
 on the 14tho As a matter of fact, Cervera left 
 St. Vincent, April 30, the Colon towing the 
 Furor, the Oquendo the Pluton, and the Teresa 
 the Terror. When Cervera left he steamed west- 
 ward. The next report was from Spain, that 
 
18 The Fall of Santiago. 
 
 Cervera had returned home and that on May 
 11 he was safe at Cadiz, waiting to be re- 
 inforced by Admiral Camara's ships. Here 
 again tbe truth is that on that very day he was 
 within twenty-four hour's easy steam of Port de 
 France, Martinique. Waiting at Port de France 
 only for dispatches, he pushed on southwest- 
 ward, and on Saturday, May 14, reached Wil- 
 lemstad, the port of the Dutch island of Curacao. 
 He entered the harbor with the Teresa and Yiz- 
 caya, leaving the Oqueudo and Colon, with the 
 three torpedo boat destroyers on the outside. 
 The selection of Willemstad as a port of call, 
 while at first blush it may seem to have been an 
 out-of-the-way locality, was really an excellent 
 one. The French cable for Caracas, Venezuela, 
 touches at Curacao, so that he was able to com- 
 municate with home over a friendly line and at 
 the same time be posted as to the condition of 
 things in Cuba. 
 
 It doubtless had been Cervera's original plan 
 to steam swiftly over the four hundred and 
 seventy-five miles lying between Curacao and 
 Porto Piico, and establish there a base of supplies 
 and attack, but at the Dutch settlement he 
 learned of Sampson's attentions to Porto Rico, 
 and so having given out the intimation that he 
 intended under the new condition of things, to 
 
The Fall of Santiago. 19 
 
 keep in the friendly shelter of the South Ameri- 
 can shores, sent the Terror on a scouting trip to 
 Porto Rico, steamed away westward, then re- 
 traced his way, put on all steam and crowded 
 for Santiago, which he reached on the morning 
 of May 19. 
 
 The prosaic but essential work of coaling hav- 
 ing been completed, Schley shipped anchor off 
 Cienfuegos and steamed eastward. He was off 
 Santiago on May 28, but neither from his guns 
 nor from the shore batteries was a single shot 
 fired to emphasize the fact of his arrival. 
 
 It will not be going ahead of the proper 
 sequence of fact and description to say here that 
 the presence of Cervera's fleet in the harbor of 
 Santiago, as something that could be sworn to 
 from evidence of sight was an extremely diflScult 
 matter of demonstration. Like all of the harbors 
 along the Cuban coast, that of Santiago is bottle- 
 shaped, with the neck as the entrance. But in 
 the case of Santiago there is not only a neck, but 
 a long and curved one. Moreover the shore 
 sides of the neck entrance are so high and pre- 
 cipitous that from the sea it is impossible to look 
 into the harbor beyond that part which lies close 
 to the inner end of the neck. How to satisfy 
 himself that Cervera was at Santiago without 
 sailing into the harbor presented itself, there- 
 
So The Fall of Santiago. 
 
 fore, as the problem wliicb Schley would have to 
 solve. To risk a sharp dash into the harbor with 
 all its certain dangers and its uncertainties, its 
 tortuous channel, mines and commanding forti- 
 fications, with the chance of not finding the 
 quarry in the presumptive hiding-place, was 
 something about which even Schley hestitated. 
 There remained then strategy, and that strategy 
 the commodore employed. 
 
 Schley knew as well as though he had been 
 told by the Governor of Santiago that his 
 movements were being closely watched from the 
 shore, that indeed no move was made without 
 being known and its significance noted. As soon 
 therefore as the squadron had steamed into the 
 blue water that lay in the bight of land forming 
 what might be called the Bay of Santiago, it 
 steamed slowly around, past the harbor mouth, 
 close enough to distinguish the guns in the 
 forts. Again no gun was fired. Upon reaching 
 the extreme eastern limit of the bight the squad- 
 ron was formed in line and steamed away west- 
 ward as though it had been making merely a 
 reconnaissance. The presumption was that if 
 Cervera were in the long-necked and land-locked 
 harbor of Santiago he would, if the feint were 
 successful, move down toward the mouth to help 
 resist the invader, and so come into the line of 
 yision. 
 
High akzr in the Cathed-l at Santiago where a Te Deum was 
 sung on the arrival of Cervera's fleet. 
 
The Fall of Santiago. ' 21 
 
 o^ 
 
 steaming away westward with as near an air 
 of disgust and disappointment as it was possible 
 for a squadron to assume, Schley signaled to stop 
 when at a sufficient distance, it being then one 
 o'clock on Saturdaj' afternoon, and the vessels hid 
 themselves, so to speak, behind a point of land 
 that shut out all observation from the Santiago 
 lookouts. 
 
 When Sunday morning broke, and Sunday 
 seems to have been selected as the day of deeds 
 in this war, all steam was made and the squadron 
 ■went churning its way back to Santiago. '\ Put- 
 ting the keenest-eyed men aloft and arming him- 
 self with the biggest pair of binoculars that the 
 A^ ship possessed, the commodore went on the 
 bridge and headed the flagship full speed for the 
 harbor entrance. > Through his glasses he made 
 out the earthworks and the Spaniards behind 
 them, but no glimpse of vessels could he get. 
 "When five miles from the shore the lookouts 
 reported the masts of three ships peeping over 
 the entrance cliffs. This was promising, but the 
 commodore wanted to see for himself. 
 
 Next Flag-Lieutenant Sears and Ensign 
 McCalley, who were perched in the forward fight- 
 ing top, declared they could see the vessels, and 
 that one of them was the Cristobal Colon. Still 
 Schley kept the vessel moving, and a few minutes 
 
22 The Fall of Santiago. 
 
 later word was shouted down from aloft that two 
 torpedo boats and a vessel of the Vizcaya class 
 could be seen. Still the Brooklyn was kept on 
 its course, until for an instant it lay right in a 
 direct line of sight into the harbor. In that 
 happy moment the commodore saw that his ruse 
 had been successful, for there clustering about 
 the inside of the entrance was Cervera's fleet. 
 
 As the Brooklyn was turned quickly out, 
 Schley took down his glasses and with a wink of 
 most portentous satisfaction said: 
 
 "I told you I would find them. I have caught 
 them and they will never get home." 
 
 Gratified as the commodore was, and as all his 
 men were, at the finding of Cervera's fleet, this 
 pacific end of the chase by no means gratified 
 the sailors and the fighting men of the deck. 
 The batteries had been cleared, the men stripped 
 for action, and though the temperature was a 
 hundred degrees in the shade, the sailors were 
 hotter still to fight. But Schley believed that it 
 was no time for a fight. For three days a howling 
 storm with furious gusts of rain-laden wind had 
 been sweeping this southeastern shore, the great 
 ships were heaving and bumping in the cross 
 running waves, and as an effective bombardment 
 is diflScuIt enough under the best conditions, it 
 was Schley's opinion that he might rest content 
 
The Fall of Santiago. 23 
 
 with the discovery of Cervera as the final act of 
 this edition of the play, without risking an anti- 
 climax by firing shells around Santiago's forts. 
 Having found him, however, the commodore 
 was very determined not to let Cervera escape, 
 and Sunday evening. May 29, found our squad- 
 ron in battle line outside Santiago, the Brooklyn 
 on the east of the line, then the Massachusetts, 
 the Iowa, the New Orleans (Amazonas) and the 
 Texas, while the Marblehead and Vixen scouted 
 near the shore and the Harvard was racing over 
 to Kingston to cable the news to "Washington. 
 
 Cervera and his twenty -million-dollars' worth of 
 cruisers had been found. 
 
 I Madrid, it was learned afterward, characterized 
 Y Cervera's slip into Santiago as a remarkable 
 V^ piece of strategy and a tactician's victory. 
 
 / Santiago welcomed Cervera as the city's savior. 
 
 I The whole community turned out to welcome the 
 
 ( admiral ; there was band-playing, song-singing, 
 speech-making, fireworks and a Te Deum of 
 thankfulness at the cathedral with the Arch- 
 
 \ bishop Monsignor Saenz y Utero y Crespo 
 
 j'oificiating in his most gorgeous raiment. At 
 Washington the receipt of the news was regarded 
 as having cleared up the entire situation, and as 
 dispelling the clouds of uncertainty v>'hich had 
 
 \ been over the War and Navy Department for 
 
M The Fall of Santiago. 
 
 ■weeks. It meant a radical cLange in the plan of 
 campaign, but that change was from the 
 general to the particular. It crystallized the 
 operations into the specific act of capturing or 
 destroying Cervera's fleet and possibly the in- 
 vestment and capture of Santiago. 
 
 With the sun setting of Sunday, May 29, the 
 •wind went down also, and there could be heard 
 the great diapason of the Texas men singing the 
 hymn "Pull for the Shore," and as he heard it 
 Schley again winked that portentous wink of his 
 and said: "We'll be pulling there, sure enough, 
 in a few' days." 
 
The Fall of Santiago. 25 
 
 CHAPTEK II. 
 
 HOW HOBSON SANK THE MERRIMAC. 
 
 Washington's reply to Schley's notification of 
 having found Cervera was : 
 
 "Under no circumstances permit ships to 
 escape. Destroy or capture them. " 
 
 And as the circling events proved, the com- 
 modore carried out those instructions to the 
 letter. 
 
 Soon after this order reached Schley, he was 
 joined, Wednesday morning, June 1, by Samp- 
 son with the New York, Oregon and Mayflower, 
 and later by the torpedo boat Porter the 
 Dolphin and the Adria with supplies and appli- 
 ances for grappling and cutting marine cables. 
 Schley went on board the New York to report 
 and It was thought that the conference would 
 result in some decided action. Schley related 
 what has been told here, and in addition told of 
 the capture of Cervera 's coal ship, the Restormel 
 by Captain Sigsbee of the St. Paul, under the 
 very guns of Santiago's El Morro on the 25th of 
 May; of the bombardment of Santiago on May 
 
26 The Fall of Santiago. 
 
 31, in which the batteries of Punta Gorcla, El 
 Morro and Zacopa were furiously shelled, and so 
 the commodore believed, a Spanish cruiser dis- 
 abledo He thought at the time that it was the 
 Cristobal Colon, but it was learned afterward 
 that it was the old timer Eeina Mercedes which 
 had been lying at Santiago. It was learned, too, 
 that a shell from the Massachusetts had struck 
 this cruiser, which had been drawn up behind 
 the harbor entrance as a sort of floating battery, 
 and, exploding, had partially sunk the ancient 
 craft. Schley was not very enthusiastic over the 
 result of this bombardment, and frankly stated 
 that when he withdrew at six o'clock in the even- 
 ing the Zacopa and Punta Gorda batteries were 
 still firing. He therefore counseled that if it 
 were decided to force an entrance into Santiago 
 and engage Cervera a necessary preliminary 
 would be to increase the blockading fleet with 
 four monitors and the Helena, the "Wilmington, 
 the Cincinnati, the Montgomery, the Detroit and 
 the dynamite boat the Vesuvius — especially the 
 latter — as with her dynamite bombs she might 
 explode the mines along the entrance way and so 
 clear a passage into the harbor after silencing 
 the forts. 
 
 Sampson held, however, and that without in 
 the faintest discrediting the report of the com- 
 
The Fall of Santiago. 27 
 
 modore, that the absolute identification of Cer- 
 vera's fleet was first necessary, and the identifica- 
 tion being complete, the bottling up of that fleet 
 might be tried in a somewhat original and spec- 
 tacular fashion. The following out of these two 
 ideas brought into the fierce light of fame two 
 young men. Lieutenant Victor Blue, of the gun- 
 boat Suwanee, and Naval Constructor, Richmond 
 Pierson Hobson. 
 
 In the matter of occurrence, as well as in the 
 relatively momentous results, the enterprise of 
 Hobson comes easily first. But lest that of Blue 
 should be lost sight of in the brighter light of 
 that which enhaloes Hobson, the expedition of 
 the lieutenant shall be dealt with first. 
 
 To catch a glimpse of the masts of warships 
 through the sinuous entrance to Santiago harbor, 
 and to look (Town on those warships from the 
 heights surrounding Santiago at such a distance 
 as would make their identification absolute, were 
 rightly esteemed by Sampson as two entirely 
 different propositions; the one being burdened 
 with the element of doubt, the other being en- 
 dowed with the benefit of certainty. Admiral 
 Sampson therefore determined to send a man on 
 a trip of inspection, and the man he selected for 
 this enterprise was Lieutenant Blue, who had 
 already run the gauntlet of five Spanish gun- 
 
28 The Fall of Santiago. 
 
 boats in the bay of Buena Vista, and had carried 
 the American flag to the spot of his meeting 
 with General Gomez. 
 
 On Saturday, June 11, Blue was landed in a 
 little coTe well to the east of the entrance and 
 pushing his way through a country swarming 
 with Spanish soldiery, and through the swelter- 
 ing, tangled jungle, only halted when he peered 
 through the cacti and palms which crested a hill 
 overlooking the old city and the long blue bay. 
 In the bay he saw Cervera's fleet, four armored 
 cruisers, two torpedo boat destroyers, and the 
 wrecked Eeina Mercedes, which with a gunboat 
 had constituted Santiago's naval defense before 
 the arrival of Cervera. Then backward through 
 the sweltering jungle, dodging the Spanish out- 
 posts and wriggling his way through a network 
 of tangling vines and tearing thorns, until on 
 Monday, ragged but triumphant, he stood on the 
 quartei'-deck of the flagship New York and made 
 his report to Admiral Sampson. 
 
 Seventy-two miles of travel through an enemy's 
 country and a pathless tropical thicket, is a deed 
 which in times of ordinary enterprise would stand 
 out as a matter for a volume, but when writing 
 of these stirring times when every day saw some- 
 thing done that marked the upspringingof anew 
 hero. Lieutenant Blue's gallant work mustbedis- 
 
 i 
 
The Fall of Santiao^. 29 
 
 missed with a paragraph. It if the misfortune of 
 comparison which diminishes Mie fact. 
 
 So many, many things hay^ffibeen written and 
 said and sung about Hobson, ^d how he put the 
 stopper into the Santiago t»gttle that all there 
 remains to do is to tell a cle^r running story of 
 the actual facts, even at the risk of brushing 
 aside one or two illusions, but, of course, with- 
 out minifying the heroism of accomplishment. 
 
 When sailing eastward; alcfait^ the northern 
 coast of Cuba the contiilgqncie.Tof Cervera's cap- 
 ture were more thaii^onle disjcussed on board 
 Sampson's liagship-/s'o Samp,4on reported to 
 Washington — and it was durin^g one of these 
 discussions that the admiral said : 
 
 "I think it. (luite possible we shall find that 
 Cervera has made a running for it to Santiago 
 harbor. If so, and if Schley has him shut up 
 there I am in favor of closing the door of his 
 prison house rather than of attempting to batter 
 down the door-post." 
 
 When asked what this plan might be the 
 admiral replied that it was not quite formulated, 
 but that it embraced the sinking of an obstruction 
 in the mouth of the harbor, ''And by the by," 
 he added, "young Hobson, of the Construction 
 Bureau, is just the man I want to consult with, 
 j I noticed him at San Juan when he stood at our 
 X ) range-finder timing the shells." 
 
 L 
 
30 The Fall of Santiago. 
 
 Hobsou was sent for and to him was put the 
 proposition of "niaking the harbor entrance 
 secure against the possibilities of egress by the 
 Spanish ships by obstructing the narrow part of 
 the entrance" to quote Sampson's words. 
 Hobson at once took the liveliest interest in the 
 plan and asked for a day or two in which to con- 
 sider the problem and the best means of working 
 it out. At the end of the given time Hobsou 
 reported to the admiral. His plan briefly was 
 not to wait for stone-laden barges, which had 
 been suggested as the best form of impediment, 
 but to take one of the fleet colliers and sink her 
 athwart the selected place in the channel. Hob- 
 son showed that the drawbacks to the barge 
 scheme Avere the time it would take to get them 
 from a United States port, and the fact that thej'' 
 would have to bo towed into position, while in 
 the case of the collier there would be no delay 
 and she would have the added advantage of be- 
 ing a self-propelling engine. Hobson wound up 
 by entering a plea that to him might be intrusted 
 the active carrying out of the plan. 
 
 "You know all that this means, Hobson?" 
 asked the admiral. 
 
 "I do, sir," replied Hobson; and the admiral 
 consented. 
 
 No one who knew Hobson could very well see 
 
The Fall of Santiago. 31 
 
 how the admiral could have refused. Upright as 
 one of his own Alabama pines; twenty-eight 
 years old; ruggedly simple in his manners; with 
 dogged determination expressed in every feature, 
 from the deep set eyes, along the pronounced 
 bridge of the nose down to the square-set jaw; 
 the sweetheart of his mother ; not afraid to show 
 that he carried a Bible in his kit; a student, 
 equally ready to pray or to fight, and with a 
 long record of having done both, "Eich" Hob- 
 son was just the sort of man that any other man 
 would have selected for the short and fiery cruise 
 of the Merrimac. 
 
 Sampson, it will be remembered, joined Schley 
 off Santiago on Wednesday morning, June 1, 
 and immediately on receiving Schley's report 
 sent in his launch to reconnoiter ashore. The 
 report brought back confirmed Schley's esti- 
 mates of the difiiculties of running the forts and 
 crystalized his resolution to attempt the bottling- 
 up process and to attempt it at once. 
 f The collier Merrimac was selected for the office 
 \ of barrier. A Norwegian steam freighter, called 
 the Solveid ; three hundred and forty -four feet 
 long, and with a tonnage of five thousand three 
 hundred and sixty-two tons; burned out while 
 loading grain at Newport News, April 27, 1897; 
 repaired at the Erie Basin, Brooklyn, for the 
 
32 The Fall of Santiago. 
 
 Loue Star Line, and standing to that company 
 at one hundred and ninety-two thousand dollars; 
 sold to the government for three hundred and 
 forty-two thousand dollars; no beauty and gen- 
 erally cantankerous in her behavior — not a soul 
 grieved when her selection for sacrifice was 
 announced. 
 
 As soon as the selection was made, active work 
 was begun to fix her up for the slaughter. All 
 her stores were taken out and all of her coal ex- 
 cept two thousand tons. In the engine room, 
 not to be technical, the covers to the valves of the 
 big fire pump were so arranged that a single 
 blow of a sledge would let in the sea; all water- 
 tight doors were opened, and where possible, the 
 bulkheads were broken down so as to give free 
 play to the water as soon as it was admitted into 
 the ship. The salient part of the plan was to 
 scuttle her by outside explosion and as a means 
 to this end, ten pitch covered 8-inch copper 
 cases, each filled with eighty pounds of ordinary 
 brown, prismatic powder and each fitted with an 
 igniting charge, primer and connecting wire for 
 electrically exploding the charge, were lowered 
 over the port rail until they rested against the 
 side of the vessel just below the water line; the 
 charges being so arranged that in each case they 
 would bear their explosive force against the 
 space between the bulkheads. 
 
The Fall of Santiago. 33 
 
 When the bombs had been lowered into posi- 
 tion, the wires for exploding the charges were 
 run along the deck and connected with a main 
 wire leading to a dry battery and contact key on 
 the bridge. Lastly, in the way of preparation 
 for sinking her all her ports were lashed open i 
 and the four cargo ports (the openings in the 
 sides of the ship through which a cargo is taken 
 on while the vessel is lying at her dock) were 
 opened, two forward and two aft, there being 
 about three feet of freeboard from the water to 
 the lower edge of the cargo ports— that is, that 
 as the vessel lay drawing sixteen feet of water 
 these openings were nineteen feet above her keel. 
 All these preparations meant that, were they 
 successfully and simultaneously carried out, at the 
 touch of the key and the blow of the sledge ham- 
 mer, six great gaping holes would be torn in the 
 ship's sides, the great sea valves would be 
 opened, and as the vessel shuddered and rocked 
 under the explosion the sea would rush into her 
 and, thus inundated from stem to stern by 
 
 r twleve rushing cataracts of water, the Merrimac 
 /\ I would go down like a rock dropped from a cliff 
 
 Mnto the sea. Lastly, as the plan for bringing 
 her to a sudden halt at the desired locality, both 
 of the ship's anchors were lashed over the rail 
 at the starboard quarter in such a way that the 
 
34 The Fall of Santiago. 
 
 chop of an ax would cut the lashiugs and drop 
 them in an instant. Then, not that there was 
 very much hope that they would be used, but as 
 a Christian precaution, a lifeboat and a cata- 
 maran life raft were slung over the side by steel 
 lines and a ship's launch was to be detailed to 
 follow in the wake and pick up the survivors of 
 this Enterprise Perilous. 
 
 All day long two hundred men were busy as 
 bees stripping the Merrimac and preparing her 
 for her last trip. From first to last, and that 
 without any planning on the part of the partici- 
 pators, the incident of the Merrimac was most 
 spectacular. As the men pulled and tore and 
 dragged at their work of discharging the collier 
 Merrimac and charging her as a death machine, 
 / they sang sometimes cheerily, sometimes dole- 
 ' fully; and as thej' sang and worked, one of those 
 black rattling thunderstorms which punctuate 
 Cuba's rainj' season, came rolling up over the 
 Santiago hills, and each time the sudden dark- 
 ness was ripped by a lightning flash, the men 
 could still be seen at their w'ork and could be 
 heard roaring out their apostrophe to "The Star 
 Spangled Banner" or putting the best harmonies 
 that they knew to the staccato refrain of "Homo 
 Sweet Home." 
 
 As these men worked the other men on board 
 
The Fall of Santiago. 35 
 
 the different vessels of the fleet were called out 
 in obedience to a signal from the flagship that 
 volunteers were wanted, and were told just what 
 was to be done; that no compulsory detail would 
 be made ; and that it must be from those wil- 
 lingb' offering their services that the Merri- 
 mac's last crew would be made up. There had 
 been no attempt to veil the character of the en- 
 terprise, in fact it was the policy of the admiral 
 in this case to see that the full gravity of the 
 plan was known all over the fleet. 
 
 "When the demand for volunteers was therefore 
 made the men knew that they were to steer an 
 undefended, non-combatting ship into the very 
 mouth of Santiago harbor. That no concealment 
 of the vessel's presence was possible or was even 
 contemplated. That every gun guarding Santi- 
 ago that could be trained upon the Merrimac 
 would be pointed and fired at her. That — for 
 such was the idea then — she would be in point- 
 blank range of the great rapid firing Maxim- 
 Nordenfeldt guns supposed to beatMorro; of 
 the whole of the Socapa battery, of the Hontorias 
 and long bronzes at Punta Gorda, of the guns 
 reputed to be at Cayo Smith — the island which 
 stands at the inner end of the harbor entrance, 
 and of all the cannon, big and little, that were 
 believed to have been placed at every vantage 
 
86 The Fall of Santiago 
 
 O"^ 
 
 X 
 
 point about the harbor's mouth — that, in fact, 
 she would be the target for roore j^aud heavier 
 guns than were trained on Cardigan's light 
 cavalry at Balaklava, They believed that their 
 chances of destruction were in the proportion of 
 one thousand to one of escape ; that death was the 
 programme and that escape would be the miracle. / 
 They believed that not only did certain annihila- 
 tion menace them from all around, but that they 
 were to travel to destruction on a vehicle which 
 they themselves had, at the critical instant, to 
 destroy. That if by God's mercy they did get 
 into the channel to that point where it was in- 
 tended she should lie as a barrier, they were to 
 sink what remained of their craft instantly and 
 effectually, and ^then to save themselves as best 
 they could by the lifeboat or raft. They be- 
 lieved, granting, still by God's mercy, they had 
 sunk the Merrimac where she should be sunk and 
 had got on board their frail means of escape, that 
 they would be still subjected to the hail of shot 
 from the batteries. They knew and believed all 
 of these things, yet when volunteers were asked 
 for — six were wanted — it was not from twice 
 or even ten times six that the selection had to 
 be made. 
 
 Every man in the fleet warded to go. 
 
 In actual figures one hundred and fifty-three 
 
The Fall of Santiago. 37 
 
 men volunteered from the Iowa, one hundred and 
 forty from the Texas, one hundred and forty- 
 nine from tbe flagship— men and officers crowd- 
 ing forward and pleading to be allowed a chance 
 not to do or die, but to do and die— so many in 
 literal fact that had all been accepted there would 
 not have been a working crew left on board a 
 single ship. 
 
 The men who were selected out of the pushing, 
 crowding, shouting body of volunteers were: 
 gunner's-mate Philip O'Boyle of the Texas; 
 gun-captain Mill of the New Orleans; seaman 
 Anderson of the Massachusetts seaman Wade; 
 of the Vixen; two of the Merrimac's men and 
 Hobson. The Vixen, when the selection had 
 been made, steamed about the fleet picking up 
 the men and then headed for the Merrimac with 
 the double purpose of putting the volunteers on 
 board and taking off the collier's crew. 
 
 And here an odd thing came to pass. Com- 
 mander Miller, of the Merrimac, and the crew of 
 the Merrimac rebelled. They were in charge of 
 the ship they said, and if there was anything to 
 be done with the old craft that was better than 
 slinging coal, any chance of distinguishing them- 
 selves, it was but right and fair they should have 
 the benefit of that chance. They could run the 
 Merrimac, they could sink her, and they could die 
 
38 The Fall of Santiago. 
 
 just as well as any one else. < It was the insubor- 
 dination of devotion, the disobedience of hero- 
 ism. \ So pertinacious in their determination 
 were the Merrimac's men, indeed, that they 
 would not and did not leave her until the 
 admiral had sent a sharp command to vacate, 
 and then they left growling and swearing at 
 being driven back to the ordinary risks of war. 
 
 At midnight Admiral Sampson went on board 
 the Merrimac to inspect the arrangements, said 
 they were excellent, and left with the full inten- 
 tion of having the vessel go in by daybreak that 
 morning, Thursday, June 2. The tide, however, 
 did not exactly serve and the admiral decided to 
 postpone the attempt until the next night. 
 Word was sent to Hobson to this effect, Hobson 
 sending back the message : 
 
 "Mr. Hobson 's compliments to the admiral, 
 and he requests that he be allowed to make the 
 attempt now, feeling certain that he can 
 succeed." 
 
 To this the admiral sent reply, "Wait until 
 to-morrow," and so far as postponement went, 
 that ended it. The plans were not changed, 
 although the postponement brought about a 
 change in the people. Hobson remained, but it 
 was considered by the head judges of character 
 that the first batch of volunteers had undergone 
 
The Fall of Santiago. 39 
 
 too great a strain by the long wait without com- 
 pensating event, and so they were sent back to 
 their ships as wretched and broken-hearted a set of 
 men as ever had their lives given back to them. 
 Again, came the mustering for volunteers, again, 
 the scenes of enthusiasm, and again, the selection 
 of the little band of volunteers. The octette of 
 immortals wore those : 
 
 Hobson, of course; George Charette, gunner's- 
 mateof the flagship New York; Osborn Diegnan, 
 coxswain of the Merrimac; George F. Phillips, 
 machinist of the Merrimac; Francis Kelly, water- 
 tender of the Merrimac; Daniel Montague, 
 master-at-arms of the Brooklyn ; J. C. Murphy, 
 coxswain of the Iowa; and Eandolph Cranson, 
 coxswain of the New York. 
 
 Six men only were chosen as before, but Cran- 
 son dropped down in the darkness to the Merri- 
 mac and hid in the hold. When this remarkable 
 stowaway was discovered it was too late to send 
 him back and he was allowed to stay. 
 
 The Merrimac's old officers and men having 
 been sent to the Texas in growling discontent, 
 and the new volunteers being safely on board 
 the collier, she lay alongside the flagship in 
 order to receive final instructions. So that Hob- 
 son and his men might be relieved of all work 
 except the great task of running his vessel 
 
40 The Fall of Santiago. 
 
 through the gauntlet of flame and shot, a pilot 
 was detailed to give Hobsou the steerway up to 
 the harbor entrance, and a special crew of forty 
 volunteers was sent on board to work her to that 
 point where the pilot was to leave and the Merri- 
 mac was to take her final run. 
 
 As the afternoon wore on another great thun- 
 derstorm came up, but with sunset came a quiet 
 
 skies clearing where they had been black and 
 
 riven by lightning, and seas running smoothly 
 where they had been whipped and torn by the 
 fierce gusts of wind, and the cascades of water 
 that always accompany these sub-tropical sum- 
 mer storms. Hobson came onboard the flagship 
 about nightfall to see the admiral. He was iu 
 full uniform, but as he had been crawling around 
 through the bulkheads of the collier and person- 
 ally inspecting the layout of the torpedoes and 
 the unshipping of the sea valves, he was in a 
 condition of grime that passes description. He 
 started to apologize, but the admiral stopped 
 him. 
 
 "Every soot spot is a service mark, Mr. Hob- 
 son," he said. 
 
 I Hobson was told that Naval Cadet Joseph 
 Wright Powell, a slip of a fellow from Oswego, 
 N. Y., would follow the Merrimac in the New 
 York's launch and pick them up, on which he 
 turned to the cadet and said : 
 
The Fall of Santiago. 41 
 
 o^ 
 
 *'Powell, Avatcb the boat's crew when we pull 
 out of the harbor. We will be cracks rowing 
 thirty strokes to the minute." 
 
 He had not been told, however, that there had 
 been almost as fierce a fight for the command of 
 the launch as there had been for a position in the 
 Merrimac's forlorn hope ; that the contest, which 
 had almost developed into a scrimmage, had nar- 
 rowed down to an issue between Cadets Palmer 
 and Powell, and that these two had settled the 
 matter by drawing cigarettes from a box, he 
 who drew the last being the man to go. When 
 Hobson in all his grime and in the full knowl- 
 edge of what he had to face left the admiral to 
 go on board the Merrimac, the officers and men 
 all crowded round to shake him by the hand and 
 wish him a God's blessing. It was noted by 
 those who did get at his hand and who could 
 look closely into his face, that there was not the 
 faintest assumption in his demeanor that he was 
 going to do something great and unusual, but 
 the simple, quiet bearing and the unaffected tem- 
 perature of a man who had a duty to do and who 
 was not in the habit of letting his duty interfere 
 with his heartbeat. 
 
 Night came and with it a moon that silvered 
 the hills around Santiago, but which left the 
 harbor mouth in deep shadow. The fleet with- 
 
42 The Fall of Santiago, 
 
 drew to about six miles from sliore forming a 
 crescent, leaving in the center of its arc the Mer- 
 rimac. When last seen by the fleet's men Hob- 
 son was standing on the collier's bridge talk- 
 ing to the pilot. The subsidary crew was at its 
 post and in its usual garb, but Hobson's aspecial 
 men were grouped underneath the bridge and 
 were stripped to their underclothing. Midnight 
 was sounded on the fleet bells, then the first 
 three morning hours, and still no signal from 
 the admiral for the Merrimac to move. 
 
 At last, at twenty-five minutes past three of 
 Friday, June 3, the lamp signals to start were 
 run up and the Merrimac began to move. If 
 eyes had been strained to see the last of Hobson, 
 they were strained doubly now to see the last of 
 the Merrimac. It was the pilot's duty to run 
 the collier into such a position that it meant a 
 clear straight- away dash to the harbor entrance, 
 but to the strung senses of the watchers every- 
 thing appeared to be going wrong, and as 
 though fate were determined to give Hobson and 
 his men every possible wrench. The Merrimac 
 was seen to flutter, as it were, for a moment, and 
 it was thought that she was off her course. Then 
 she was seen again running and then to stop. 
 This time it was made out that she was properly 
 headed and that the pilot and subsidiary crew 
 were leaving her. 
 
The Fall of Santiago. 43 
 
 '&^ 
 
 So quiet was the night and so still was every 
 one keeping that through her open ports and 
 hatchways could be heard the jingle of the Mer- 
 rimac's engine-room bell, and as it was heard the 
 smoke was seen to come tumbling out of her 
 funnel as she jumped ahead. Then the fleet saw 
 her no more, for she had entered the great 
 shadows of the harbor hills. 
 
 The light of El Morro burned bright but quiet, 
 and as it was not swept over the arc of the en- 
 trance the watchers imagined for one wild 
 moment that the Merrimac might have slipped 
 by the forts unobserved, but scarcely had this 
 hope been formed when from out the eastern side 
 there came an arrow of flame, and with this 
 signal flash and following roai*, the hills on each 
 side of the harbor became volcanoes. 
 
 By Cadet Powell, in charge of the launch, act- 
 ing as life saver, it was calculated that Hobsou 
 had got to within three hundred yards of the 
 entrance before the first shore gun was fired, and 
 to his wrought-up fancy it seemed that not even 
 in a bombardment from the fleet had he seen such 
 a screaming, flashing, continuous fire as that 
 which followed the Spanish gunner's discovery 
 of the Merrimac. 
 
 Certainly the water about the collier was white 
 with foam as though it had been whipped with 
 
44 The Fall of Santiago. 
 
 a hail storm, -while to the plunging fire of the 
 batteries was added the continuous rattle of the 
 garrison's musketry. Powell held it to be abso- 
 lutely impossible for the Merrimac even to 
 advance in the face of such a reception, much 
 less live, but on she plowed through it all until, 
 just as she had been lost to the view of the fleet 
 in the shadow of the cliffs, so, she was lost to 
 Powell's view as she dashed in between them. 
 
 Then above the scream and roar of the guns 
 and the snap and whistle of the rifles came five 
 thunder claps that drowned all the Spaniard's 
 noise and the fleet knew either that she had been 
 blown up by mines, or at least, one man had 
 lived through it all and had touched off the 
 battery. 
 
 Then a silence where there had been such an 
 uproar and nothing seen until a quarter past five, 
 when Powell's launch was discovered steaming 
 out from the shore followed by a new clatter and 
 shrieking from the Spanish forts as they picked 
 up this little craft and did their best to blow her 
 into matchwood. But she raced safely to the 
 shelter of the flagship's drab sides, although it 
 was to bring the sad report that "No one had 
 come out of the entrance to the harbor." No 
 one had supposed that Powell would save a single 
 member of the Merrimac's men or that any one 
 
The Fall of Santiago. 45 
 
 would be left to save. So Powell's report was 
 simply looked ou as one of the incidents in the 
 inevitable catastrophe. 
 
 But no, Hobson had not only measurably done 
 what he started to do, he had done it without los- 
 ing a man, and almost without a scratch. Eiddled 
 like a sieve as she was he had pushed the Merri- 
 mac past the forts, over the mines, two of which 
 exploded, and had driven her staggering right to 
 the selected spot and then, while shot and shell 
 plowed and plunged about them, each man had 
 done his particular duty as though fear or haste, 
 or need to haste were unknown quantities. 
 
 The anchor lines were cut, the two anchors 
 flew down bringing the ship up with a jerk as 
 their flukes caught below, and then, as the tide 
 swung her round in the channel, the valves were 
 opened, engines stopped, and with three bellow- 
 ing crashes and three rending staggering blows 
 at her sides, that number of torpedoes was ex- 
 ploded and the Merrimao settled in ninety 
 seconds and in thirty feet of water. 
 
 The whaleboat had been blown to pieces but 
 the catamaran was saved, and on this Hobson 
 and his men leaped just before the ship began to 
 settle. There was no chance for them to get into 
 the open sea and so Hobson, characteristically, 
 decided to make for the Spanish shore. As the 
 
46 The Fall of Santiago. 
 
 Spanish gunners saw the raft put off from the 
 sinking hulk they forbore to fire, and when the 
 men reached shore the Spanish gunners shook 
 hands with them and patted them on the back. 
 And when they were marched as prisoners to 
 Cervera, the Spanish admiral not only shook 
 hands with them and patted them on the back, 
 but embraced the quiet Alabamian and told him 
 that he was a man after his own heart. 
 
 More than this, he sent Captain Oviedo, his 
 chief of staff, out to Admiral Sampson with a flag 
 of truce and a long message of compliments, a 
 report of what had been accomplished, all done 
 as an act of appreciation shown by one sailor to 
 another sailor concerning the brave act of still 
 another sailor. 
 
 And so it was learned that what Hobson 
 
 had started out to do ho had done. He had 
 
 done it with nothing more than the hope that he 
 
 might be allowed to live long enough to sink his 
 
 /'ship, but to him and to the brave men who were 
 
 ' with him there had come that sheltering hand 
 
 J that seems always extended over those who, with 
 
 clear heads and calm souls, go steadfastly along 
 
 \ their lines of duty. 
 
 Neither the entities of history nor of narrative 
 will be destroyed if it is told here how "with 
 weeping and with laughter" flobson and his fel- 
 
The Fall of Santiago. 47 
 
 low heroes came into the American lines July 6. 
 It had been supposed, in view of Admiral Cer- 
 vera's extreme courteousuess toward the con- 
 structor, that an exchange of the Merrimac's men 
 might easily be effected. Such was not the case, 
 however, and after dallying negotiations which 
 were carried limpingly around the circle from 
 Blanco to Washington, and from Washington to 
 Madrid, from Madrid to Santiago and thence to 
 Havana again, the matter came to a standstill. 
 
 It happened, however, that at the battle of El 
 Caney we had captured, among many others, a 
 Lieutenant Arios, of the aristocratic Barcelona 
 regiment, and with Arios and his fellow-oihcers 
 in our hands we were able effectually to treat for 
 an exchange. On tho morning of July 6, a 
 meeting took place under a tree midway between 
 the lines of the Rough Riders and those of the 
 first Spanish intrenchments. Colonel John 
 Jacob Astor conducted to this rendezvous three 
 Lieutenants Volez, Aurolius, and Arios, besides 
 fourteen sergeants, corporals and privates. 
 Hobson and his men came out under charge of 
 Major Tries, a Spanish staff officer. The Spanish 
 prisoners were kept blindfolded until they 
 reached the point of exchange; the eyes of the 
 American prisoners wereuubaudaged. Irieswas 
 told that he might have all fourteen of the men 
 
V 
 
 48 The Fall of Santiago. 
 
 and his choice of the officers. Without hesita- 
 tion he chose the aristocrat. Then Colonel Astor 
 put out hia hand to Hobson saying : 
 
 "My name is Astor, and I'm mighty glad to 
 welcome j'ou back to freedom." 
 
 "Thank you, colonel," replied the Alabamiau, 
 "if you are half as glad as I am to get back, 
 there is no question as to the warmth of your 
 welcome." 
 
 Then the Spanish major and the American 
 colonel looked at their watches, and seeing that 
 the hour of truce, during which this little pacific 
 interlude had been conducted, was on the point 
 of expiring, bowed with Americo-Castilian 
 politeness to each other and went back to their 
 lines. 
 
 If Hobson had been of the stiiff that is puffed 
 into bullfrog uselessness he would surely have 
 been spoiled by the reception which his fighting 
 compatriots accorded him from the first intrench- 
 ment to the last vessel of the fleet. The Rough 
 Eiders, cowboys and college men, swarmed out of 
 the trenches and over the guns yelling like Com- 
 anches; swept them off their feet and bore them 
 on their shoulders inside the lines. Then the 
 colored troopers swarmed about and the Alabama 
 white shook hands with the Georgia black as 
 though slave days had ended five centuries ago ; 
 
The Fall of Santiafs:©. 49 
 
 o" 
 
 every soldier who knew what was going on 
 yelled as though he had personally secured free- 
 dom from a Spanish cell ; the wounded in the 
 hospital at Siboney sat up in their cots and 
 cheered, and when the launch bearing the re- 
 leased prisoners put off from Daiquiri in the dusk 
 of the evening and made for the Now York, every 
 ship's whistle tooted and every ship's men 
 
 • cheered, and even Admiral Sampson stepped over 
 his habitual reserve and embraced Hobson with 
 almost as much effusion as had the Spanish 
 admiral. 
 
 ^ Hobson 's story, a characteristically simple 
 one, cleared up many points that had been in 
 doubt. He said that he and his associates had 
 been confined in Morro Castle but four days, 
 being removed thence on board the Reina Mer- 
 cedes which the Spanish were using as a hospital 
 ship. The kind greeting which Cervera had 
 granted them bore its fruit and during the 
 whole thirty-three days of their incarceration 
 their treatment by the Spanish was most cour- 
 teous. 
 
 It was not a keen sighted gunner, as had been 
 supposed, who first caught a glimpse of the 
 Merrimac stealing into Santiago, but a patrol 
 boat which ran close up under the stern of the 
 Merrimac and fired several shots at her from a 
 
50 The Fall of Santiago. 
 
 three-pouuder. In this fire the Merrimac'a rud- 
 der was carried away. The picket boat at once 
 gave the alarm and in a moment the guns of the 
 Vizcaya, Almiraute Oqueudo and shore Latteries 
 were turned upon the collier, while sub-marine 
 mines and torpedoes grumbled and exploded all 
 about her. 
 
 When the Merrimac was in the desired posi- 
 tion and the attempt was made to throw her 
 across the channel the loss of the rudder was 
 discovered. It was not possible therefore, to do 
 this, but the anchors were thrown out and the 
 tide swung her so that she blocked the passage- 
 way for some three-quarters of it. As the 
 anchors were dropped the catamaran was 
 launched and Hobson touched off the battery. 
 At that same moment two torpedoes, fired by the 
 Keiua Mercedes, struck the Merrimac amidships 
 and in the combined shock the collier was lifted 
 out of the water and almost rent asunder. 
 
 It is worthy of remark that one of the first 
 acts of Hobson after his return to the New York 
 was a request to the admiral that he might be 
 allowed to take a battleship into the harbor, 
 claiming that the shore fortifications were not 
 nearly as formidable as was supposed. Quite as 
 characteristically, Sampson concluded that his 
 policy of long distance bombardment was better 
 than the constructor's plan of venture and dash. 
 
The Fall of Santiago. 51 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 HOW THE MARINES FOUGHT AT GUANTANAMO. 
 
 The whole campaign at Santiago was so full of 
 spectacular effects and valiant deeds, done in- 
 dividually and collectively, that what would 
 under ordinary circumstances mark an epoch, 
 becomes but an incident in the revival of 
 America's military spirit. Treading close on the 
 heels of Hobson's exploit, for instance, came 
 Huntington's defense of Fisherman's Point at 
 Guantanamo Bay, leading up to the first battle 
 on Cuban soil, and of which some future his- 
 torian will make a book. 
 
 With Cervera at Santiago, the seat of war in 
 the West Indies, as has been said, was suddenly 
 and distinctively removed to that port. It 
 meant the determination to destroy the Spanish 
 admiral's fleet together with the city's invest- 
 ment by sea and land, and our government at 
 once set to work to dispatch the beleaguering 
 forces southward. But the mobilization and 
 transport of an invading army, especially when 
 that army is to enter on a tropical campaign and 
 
52 The Fall of Santiago. 
 
 has been raised from the basis of a citizen 
 soldiery, is a task whose rapid and successful 
 accomplishment should mean the canonization of 
 the quartermaster-general. In every such en- 
 terprise some bureau, some group of men, is sure 
 to be ahead of the others — to form a sort of pro- 
 cess on the body military, so to speak. In this 
 case it was Lieutenant Colonel Eobert "W. Hunt- 
 ington and his six hundred marines, who for 
 weeks had been cramped and packed on the 
 sweltering decks of the troop ship Panther off 
 Tampa, before her commander received instruc- 
 tions to weigh anchor and report to Sampson off 
 Santiago. 
 
 It was at ten o'clock on Friday morning, June 
 10, that the troop ship under convoy of the Yo- 
 semite steamed up to the blockading fleet and half 
 an hour later she had put about for Guantanamo 
 to land her marines. The place had been selected 
 as a base of operations and supplies, and, topo- 
 graphically it was an ideal selection. The harbor 
 of Guantanamo is one of the best on the south 
 coast of Cuba. It lies thirty-eight miles east of 
 Santiago, the town and fort being situated about 
 five miles back from the coast. There are no 
 established fortifications to speak of at the en- 
 trance to the harbor, but prior to the arrival of 
 the Panther's men, the Spaniards — who kept 
 
Guantanamo Bay and its surrounding — Where Huntington's marines esta^jlished tlie rirst 
 United States military camp in Cuba. 
 
The Fall of Santiago. 53 
 
 singularly well iuformed as to our intended 
 movements — bad thrown up earthworks and dug 
 rifle pits from which to command this entrance. 
 Here, in order to understand what follows, it 
 will be necessary to gain as clear an idea as possi- 
 ble of the lay of the land. 
 
 Looking shoreward from on board ship you 
 would see to the west, that is to the left of the 
 entrance, a rather extensive strip of low lying, 
 swampy ground. To the right is a sandy stretch 
 covered with bushes and cacti from which rises 
 the shoulder of a range of steep, almost precipi- 
 tous, rocky hills running parallel with the shore 
 and ending in a lagoon. Up and down the face 
 of the hills are jutting rocks and patches of faded 
 vegetation, while at their base on the little rocky 
 ledge or beach is, or was, a straggling collection 
 of fishermen's huts, one or two stores, and the 
 distinctively clean looking cable office. Between 
 the swampy lowland of the west and the cliff- 
 like hills of the east lay spread out the curving 
 waterway into Guantanamo harbor. On the 
 bare, brown summit of a bluff which formed a 
 step of the cliff and in caves in the cliff itself, 
 the Spaniards had placed their earthworks and 
 rifle pits and out of these earthworks and rifle 
 pits. Captain McCalla had driven them on the 
 day before with the guns of the Marblehead. 
 
54 The Fall of Santiago. 
 
 If you landed and toiled up one of the steep 
 zig-zag trails until you stood on tbe top of the 
 blulf beside tbe deserted earthworks and looked 
 inland you would see that the shore mountains 
 really comprised three distinct, heavily-wooded 
 ranges of a gradually increasing elevation and 
 with equally heavily-wooded gullies between the 
 ridges. Back of the ridges stretched out the 
 flat lauds around the upper end of the bay on 
 which it set down the city of Guantauamo. 
 Looking across the bay you would see the village 
 and fort of Caimanera and the railroad running 
 up to Guantanamo. 
 
 When the Panther reached Guantanamo bay 
 the fishing village and its defenses were found to 
 be deserted alike by fishermen and soldiers. 
 The marines were all landed, in quick and easy 
 order, running and cheering and stretching 
 their legs like a lot of schoolboys at recess. 
 Then they lugged their equipage up the trails to 
 the breezy bluff, where they pitched their tents, 
 established camp and named it after the com- 
 mander of the Marblehead. The Spaniards had 
 left a flagpole and just before sunset, while the 
 shore detail was burning up the wretched little 
 village below, as the most convenient form of 
 fumigating the locality, the Stars and Stripes 
 were run up at Camp McCalla, the main body of 
 
The Fall of Santiago. 55 
 
 mariue* was drawn up in line and the first estab- 
 lishment of United States troops on Cuban soil 
 was greeted with cheers from above and below, 
 and by a salute from the little fleet lying in the 
 r roadstead. Then the men sang and ate and 
 \ frolicked and at ten o'clock the camp, save for 
 j the sentries, was as quiet as a wood in winter. 
 C The quiet lasted just two houi-s, for everybody 
 agreed that it was midnight, when, instead of six 
 hundred sleeping men there were six hundred 
 swearing marines startled into half-wakefulness 
 by a shot, a sentry's challenge and then a crack- 
 ing volley. If the first moment was one of half- 
 wakefulness, the second was one of complete 
 activity, and in two minutes the rifles of the 
 marines were all vigorously replying to the crack 
 and splutter of the Spanish Mausers that came, 
 or seemed to come from the chaparral-covered 
 slopes to the east. The long Mauser bullets were 
 singing over the marines' heads, but no one was 
 hit and as the hail from the Lees battered the 
 brush which concealed the Spaniards, the firing 
 from the thicket soon lessened. 
 
 It did not, however, cease and all that night 
 Huntington's men were kept awake and on the 
 jump by single shots and volleys from the 
 guerrillas. Neither was there any rest for the 
 marines during daylight on Saturday. The 
 
5G The Full of Santiago. 
 
 volloy firing ceased, it is true, but tLe camp was 
 made the center for one of the roost aggravating 
 and nerve-destroying forms of attack of which 
 it is possible to conceive. 
 
 Untried, absolutely inexperienced in any form 
 of land fighting, all the marines had to fall back 
 on was the discipline of drill and individual grit. 
 But in no tactics had they ever come across any- 
 thing that met the exigencies of the present occa- 
 sion. Nearly all town-bred, conscious that at all 
 times they were regarded as a sort of marine 
 police, they found themselves suddenly called on 
 to bear the brunt of an attack so harassing and 
 unusual that to meet it would have called up all 
 the experience and cunning of our plain and 
 ' lava-bed fighters. Instead of fighting the Spanish 
 troops in Cuba the Panther's men might really 
 have been fighting the Sioux in the Bad Lands 
 ; of South Dakota. Like the half-blind man in the 
 ! Bible they saw men as trees walking, for the 
 Spaniards, stripping themselves to the buff re- 
 clothed themselves with the Adamic garb of 
 loaves, and, gently waving palm trees over their 
 heads, crept stealthily here and there until a 
 tongue of fire and a singing bullet showed that 
 . instead of a piece of tropical vegetation it was a 
 1 Spanish sharp-shooter. Not only were the Span- 
 ! iards masked but they were, undoubtedly, under 
 
The Fall of Santiago. 6l 
 
 the very prince of guerrilla fighters; one "who, to 
 the cunning- of the Indian added the cruelty of 
 the Inquisitorial Spaniard. Silenced at one 
 point, the bushwhackers would break out into 
 furious firing from another; then, when all the 
 bush seemed to have been battered into silence 
 by the marines, the rifle fire would blaze out 
 from a hundred points at once. 
 
 Although under this scattering but persistent 
 fire from the Spaniards all day, Huntington kept 
 his men at work strengthening the earthworks, 
 digging new rifle pits, and dragging up the bat- 
 talion's field-pieces from the beach, and when 
 Saturday night came the marines were ready 
 enough to bless their commander for his pre- 
 science and discipline. Sleep was absolutely out 
 of the question. All through the night, shadowy 
 figures could be dimly seen creeping through the 
 edge of the bush that rose around the camp. 
 There was the constant, tense, singing note of 
 the Mauser balls following the sharp pop of the 
 Spanish rifles ; the humming deeper note of the 
 Lee bullets following the louder ring of the 
 marines' weapons; while, as the result of a coun- 
 sel between Huntington, Philip and McCalla, the 
 Texas and Marblehead added their deeper note 
 to the serenade. The warships swung their 
 searchlights on to the bush, and sent in their 
 
68 The Fall of Santiago, 
 
 launches with orders to let fly their howitzers 
 at any illuminated spot that showed a Spaniard 
 as a blot in its cone of light. 
 
 It was all decidedly iiicturesque, but neither 
 the searchlights nor the howitzers of the 
 launches, nor the constant blazing of the 
 marines at anj-thing that seemed to suspiciously 
 move in the undergrowth brought any relief to 
 Camp McCalla. As a desperate resort a detail 
 of men was sent out to set fire to the jungle, but 
 this proved impossible on account of the lush 
 young trees which formed the undergrowth. 
 While the attempt was being made to smoke out 
 the guerrillas from the nearest slope, the Span- 
 iards appeared in the bush across the lagoon to 
 the east of the camp. They were driven thence 
 by the searchlights of the Marblehead and the 
 clever drop of a few screeching shells only to 
 appear in a ravine on the east side near the bay 
 shore. And so it went on all night, until from 
 want of sleep, because of the long fight with 
 shadows, and from a night of noise unspeakable 
 
 ; the men, when dajdight struck them, looked as 
 haggard as though they had camped for a fort- 
 
 ; night in a stable of nightmares. 
 
 There had been men killed, too. Not manj^ it 
 is true, not one per cent of what would have 
 been the result had the Spaniards' aim ap- 
 
The Fall of Santiago. 59 
 
 proacbed in accuracy the cleverness of their 
 tactics. Those who had been killed and wounded 
 had been shot down almost at the rifle's muz- 
 zle, and so horrible were the effects of the fierce 
 wire nails of the Mausers at this distance that it 
 was supposed at first the Spaniards had been 
 guilty of unutterable mutilations. 
 
 For the first time our surgeons were able to 
 make a close study of what a Mauser rifle-shot 
 wound was like. To their reports the curious 
 student of the horrors of modern warfare is re- 
 ferred. All that need be said here is that the 
 dead and wounded in the fighting around Guan- 
 tauamo bay showed that the Mauser bullet when 
 received at close range makes at its point of en- 
 trance only a small hole, but at its point of exit 
 it seems to take everything with it. In size the 
 bullet is as the section of an ordinary lead pencil 
 one and a half inches long. It is nickel covered, 
 but while the charges of mutilation, which Ad- 
 miral Sampson laid against the Spaniards when he 
 saw the dreadful character of the men's wounds, 
 were withdrawn, the evidence would seem to show 
 that in some cases the nickel points of the bul- 
 lets had been scraped away. The result was 
 that the exposed lead mushroomed on its impact 
 and when to this spreading quality of the missile 
 was added its rotary motion, the resulting 
 
60 The Fall of Santiago. 
 
 wound, as may be imagined, was a frightful one. 
 Those killed at Guantanamo and struck in the 
 head would have been scarcely more shattered 
 had they stood in the path of a shell. 
 
 The marines saw these things, and they saw, 
 too, that their camp on the bluff, breezy though 
 it might be, was, on account of the thickly 
 wooded hills around it and its own baroness, 
 little more than a target for the Spanish bush- 
 whackers. Huntington saw this also, and when 
 Sunday morning came he decided to move camp 
 to the landing-place on Fisherman's Point. 
 McCalla sent sixty-live Cuban insurgents, and 
 Philip added a squad of blue jackets and two 
 Colt automatic guns to assist in the moving. 
 Instead of being a day of rest it was a day of 
 din, distress and desperation. The Spaniards 
 swarmed througli the bushes and every move 
 made by the marines was under a hot fire. In 
 the midst of it those who had been killed, in- 
 cluding Assistant Surgeon Gibbs, had to be 
 buried, but the same spirit that prompted the 
 scraping of the Mauser bullet and the shooting 
 of a noncombatant under the shadow of the 
 Eed Cross stood out ferociously even here. 
 
 Graves were dug in the red, stony soil of the 
 bluff to the north of the camp and a squad of 
 marines was sent ashore from the Texas to act as 
 
m 
 
The Fall of Santiago. 61 
 
 funeral escort, Huntington's marines being too 
 busy in the diverse labors of moving camp and 
 potting tliG Spanish bushwhackers. About the 
 time the little procession, headed by Chaplain 
 Jones of the Texas, had stumbled over the rocky 
 ground to the improvised graveyard, the firing 
 from the bush slackened sufficiently for the men 
 of Camp McCalla to look around. They saw 
 this little procession, and laying down fheir Lees 
 in the trenches, stepped over and fell in after the 
 Texas men. No sooner had they done this than 
 the skulking Spaniards turned a hot fire on the 
 funeral party. For a moment or two chaplain, 
 escort, and marines paid no attention to the fusil- 
 lade, but grouped themselves about the open 
 graves, the chaplain, it is true, stepping behind 
 the mounds of new turned earth, but without 
 dropping a word of the service. The sad little 
 ceremony would have been concluded with this 
 attendance had not the Spaniards crept in force 
 up to the nearest clumps of bushes from which 
 the bullets were so persistently whistled that 
 chaplain, mourners and corpses alike seemed in 
 danger of being riddled. 
 
 This was too much for the men of Camp 
 McCalla, and with a cry of "Fall in," they 
 rushed for their rifles in the trenches. As they 
 broke away from the funeral they had begun the 
 
62 Tlie Fall of Santiago. 
 
 intoning of the Lord's Prayer, and it was ■with- 
 out ceasing the full-throated intercession that, 
 throwing themselves flat, they pegged fiercely 
 away at the hidden and pitiless enemy. The 
 pump of the Lee bullets was as rhythmical as 
 the intoned phrases. (It was a praj^er punctuated 
 , with gunshots, and was only another instance of 
 < the Puritan spirit — ^the spirit of the Bible and 
 J sword carried hand to hand into battle — that 
 I marked this whole campaign. \ The ships in the 
 bay sniffed the contest from afar and turned 
 loose their shells and machine guns, and it was 
 to this martial accompaniment that the dead were 
 buried. Chaplain Jones committing his brethren 
 to the ground without a break in his sonorous 
 voice, and without a cringe in his long, thin 
 form as he stood full in the strong sunlight. 
 
 Although the camp was moved to the beach, 
 the intrenchments on the hilltop were not de- 
 serted. The American flag had been planted on 
 the site of the destroyed blockhouse, and it was 
 not to b,e taken down or forsaken. New trenches 
 were dug and the defending guns better placed. 
 Still the attacks from the bush were maintained, 
 varied now by dashes on the beach camp from 
 the chaparral growing around the eastern lagoon. 
 More men were killed and the constant drag and 
 Hirain were visibly telling on the marines. It 
 
The Fall of Santiago. 63 
 
 was very evident that something had to be done 
 to break this dreadful monotony of fighting hid- 
 den foes. A retreat was out of the question, and 
 so it was decided to make at onco a sortie and a 
 round up. 
 
 How strong the Spaniards might be was not 
 known, the Ciiban scouts bringing in estimates 
 that varied from two hundred to two thousand, 
 but it was known that constant accessions to the 
 army of bushwhackers were being ferried across 
 the bay from Caimanera, and that unless some 
 bold movement were made the first American 
 garrison in Cuba stood a very good chance of 
 being shot out of existence or driven into the 
 sea. 
 
 Roughly speaking, the Spaniards held the 
 three ranges of hills, before alluded to, and 
 which were like three fingers with two deep 
 valleys between, like the hollows between the 
 fingers. On the first ridge stood a heliograph 
 station ; on a mound commanding the first and 
 second ridges stood a blockhouse; and between 
 the second and third ridges was a well, or water 
 tank, around which had been established the 
 guerrilla headquarters. All three, heliograph 
 station, blockhouse, and well, were to be the 
 objects of attack, for it was argued that with their 
 signal station, their stronghold, and their water 
 
64 The Fall of Santiao^o. 
 
 ■&^ 
 
 supply goiie, the biisliwhackers would find them- 
 selves deprived of their three mainstays. 
 
 That the enterprise might prove a failure never 
 entered the heads of Huntington and his officers. 
 The woods had to be purged of the Spaniards. 
 That was the simple programme. 
 
 Early on Tuesday morning, June 14, two hun- 
 dred and eighty-nine Americans, and forty-one 
 Cubans were dravv-n up at Fisherman's Point 
 ready for the desperate expedition. The men 
 were divided into four companies. Captains 
 Elliott and Spicer each had ninety marines and 
 fifteen Cubans in his party. Lieutenants 
 Mahoney and In gate each had fifty marines in 
 his command, Mahoney Laving ten Cubans and 
 Ingate one, this latter to act as guide. The 
 Ingate party can be very briefly disposed of. 
 Its contemplated share in the operations was to 
 skirt the first range of hills eastward until it 
 came to the lagoon and then turn northward, 
 that is inhuid way, so as to be able to attack the 
 guerrilla headquarters from the flank while the 
 other parties were attacking it from the front. 
 Long before the flank movement could be exe- 
 cuted, however, Ingate grew suspicious of his 
 Cuban guide and turned back. Elliott and 
 Spicer were to make objectivelj' for the Spanish 
 headquarters, while Mahoney 's line of advance 
 
The Fall of Santiago. G5 
 
 was between that of these two captains and that 
 of Ingate, with the capture of the heliograph 
 station and blockhouse as a preliminary duty. 
 The Cubans were to act as scouts and bush- 
 beaters. 
 
 The marines were inspected as scrutinizingly 
 as though they were to parade; the Cubans 
 hopped spasmodically about without any sem- 
 blance of order or preparation. The marines 
 were clad in their brown uniforms, as speckless 
 as though just from the factory; the Cubans wore 
 what the sailors had given them, what rags they 
 had owned, or nothing, as the fancy suited them. 
 The faces of the marines were drawn, bronzed, 
 rather wistful and decidedly determined; those 
 of the Cubans were mostly black and were agleam 
 with satisfaction and pride at having a chance to 
 show the Americans what they could do in fight- 
 ing the Spanish. 
 
 There was a sharp call of order and then the 
 lines of brown, white and black men began to 
 climb up the steep tangled sides of the first ridge. 
 Mahouey's men were first at work. They found 
 the heliograph station guarded by a company of 
 Spaniards and there was immediately the song 
 in unison of Lee and Mauser. The Spaniards 
 had been waiting the attack while the marines 
 had been toiling through the tangle of woods 
 
66 The Fall of Santiago. 
 
 under a broilini^ sun, but when witbin shooting 
 range our men went to work at once as steadily 
 and sturdily as though they had been the waiting 
 party. Fifteen minutes of this brisk, deadly 
 work and the Spaniards tied helter-skelter down 
 the inland slope of the first range, where they 
 were joined by the fleeing garrison of the block- 
 house, while the marines knelt along the ridge 
 and picked off the fleeing men as they ran or 
 dodged from bush to bush. 
 
 Meanwhile Elliott and Spicer's men to the 
 west but moving northward had crossed the 
 first ridge, tramped across the gully, and 
 climbed to the top of the second ridge under 
 a spattering but wild fire of the Spaniards who 
 were stationed here. When our men reached 
 the summit of the second ridge the sun was blaz- 
 ing at high noon, the water in their canteens was 
 a sickly warm fluid and the jungle through which 
 they had come was so full of thorny cactus and 
 tearing mesquite that each step was a struggle. 
 Yet when our men reached this crest and saw the 
 guerrilla headquarters in the valley beneath, a 
 new spirit of freshness took possession of them. 
 Plainly in view, in the valley before them were 
 the huts of the men, the ofiicer's quarters and 
 the water tank which they had set out to destroy. 
 The marines and Cubans had scrambled up the 
 
The Fall of Santiago. 67 
 
 ridge on which they now stood in single order 
 and as best they might, but when once there the 
 hundred and eighty marines and the thirty 
 Cubans were formed in line along the crest, with 
 the Cubans on the left flank and then began to 
 slowly work their way down, firing as they went. 
 The long brown and white line moved steadily 
 down the slope, aiming and firing as it moved, 
 with the Spaniards' bullets whistling viciously 
 all about it. The guerrillas fired from the shelter 
 of the huts and other buildings so that they really 
 had the advantage of an intrenched position, but 
 the marines never wavered in their advance. 
 
 Now they were at the base of the hill and the 
 order was given to fix bayonets and charge across 
 the gully. The gleam and click of the bayonets 
 were too much for the Spaniards, and in a panic 
 they left the shelter of the headquarters and 
 made for the cover of the brush-clad slopes of 
 the third ridge. Between the huts and brush, 
 however, there was a clear space of about one 
 hundred yards, and as the Spaniards galloped 
 across this open space it was easy shooting for 
 our men. Still in line they advanced, pouring a 
 deadly fire into the guerrillas, while the Cubans 
 waved their machetes and sprang forward with a 
 howl. Still in line, the brown-clad marines 
 made straight for the thickets into which the 
 
C8 The Fall of Santiago. 
 
 Spaniards bad fled, Avbile the white and black 
 clad Cubans ran and iired, and cursed as they 
 ran. Out of the thickets the Spaniards darted, 
 and as thej- darted the marines shot them down. 
 Up the slopes the Spaniards climbed and strug- 
 gled, while the marines climbed and struggled 
 after them and fired as they climbed. Clear to 
 the crest the Spaniards were driven, and then to 
 their dismay another fighting force of these ter- 
 rible Americans was met. 
 
 After capturing the heliograph station and 
 blockhouse Mahouey and his men had skirted the 
 eastern end of the second and third ridges in an- 
 ticipation of just what was happening so that when 
 the terror-stricken Spaniards started to scamper 
 down this third ridge Mahoney's fifty marines 
 and ten Cubans were waiting for them. Back 
 the Spaniards ran and as they scrambled once 
 more on to the crest of the third ridge, still 
 another enemy appeared. Huntington had taken 
 counsel with the commander of the Dolphin, and 
 that gunboat had been watching all the morning 
 for just this opportunity. "With their glasses 
 the Dolphin's ofiicers had been sweeping the 
 hills for a good chance for a long shot and when 
 the Spaniards appeared crowding the hilltop they 
 knew they had that chance. Down dropped the 
 shells in the midst of the dismayed Spaniards 
 
The Fall of Santiago. 69 
 
 and again they rushed to the hillside. Again, 
 Mahoney's men met them and as the Spaniards 
 turned back again they were met by Captain 
 Elliott's marines moving steadily up the slope 
 and by the fierce assault of the Cubans. 
 
 Three times over that terrible ridge were the 
 Spanish guerrillas thus driven. With two 
 musketry cross-fires, the assaults of the Cubans 
 and the bursting of the shells as a composite hor- 
 ror, the Spaniards finally made their disordered 
 way down the further side of the last ridge and 
 so into the shelter of the Guantauamo lowlands. 
 The five days of persistent cruel bush attacks had 
 been amply revenged. In the sortie two Cubans 
 had been killed and one of our marines wounded, 
 while of the Spanish some one hundred killed 
 and wounded lay between the heliograph station 
 and the last slope of the third ridge. To wind 
 up the expedition the water tank and headquar- 
 ters were destroyed, the blockhouse razed, eigh- 
 teen prisoners captured, and a hundred rifles and 
 a thousand rounds of ammunition brought back 
 by the dripping, wearied, but triumphant, little 
 army. 
 
 It was not a very great affair, but barring the 
 funny little Gussie expedition it was the first 
 battle on Cuban soil between American and 
 Spanish forces. Moreover, it was a fight between 
 
70 The Fall of Santiago. 
 
 unseasoued, wearied men, fighting their way 
 througli au enemy's country, and a much 
 superior force of seasoned veterans holding a 
 strong position. The odds had been all against 
 us, but the honors were all ours. From Spanish 
 sources it was afterward learned that the de- 
 fenders of the hills included at least two com- 
 panies of picked regulars and two companies of 
 guerrillas, numbering in all four hundred and 
 eighty men. The actual losses on the Spanish 
 sides in the six days fighting cannot be stated, 
 but they were approximately one hundred and 
 fifty killed and wounded, while ours were five 
 killed and fifteen wounded. 
 
 Having driven the bushwhackers off the ridges 
 and destroyed their rallying center, it was next 
 decided to put a stop to the constant accession 
 of reinforcements which had been received by 
 the bushwhackers from Guantanamo by way 
 of Caimauera. Every day new detachments 
 of Spanish soldiers had been brought from 
 the city by railroad to the fort and earthworks, 
 and these it was decided to reduce. Accordingly 
 on the day following the successful sweep of the 
 marines over the hills, the Texas, Marblehead and 
 Suwanee sailed into Guantanamo Bay, and from 
 two until half-past three o'clock in the afternoon 
 rained shells on the brickwork and intrench- 
 
The Fall of Santiago. Tl 
 
 ments. At the end of this bombardment the fort 
 was a brick pile and the trenches were little more 
 than reddish-brown dirt heaps, while the garri- 
 son, or such as was left of it, had taken train to 
 Guantanamo. 
 
 The infliction of these two blows taught the 
 Spaniards their lesson, and from that time on the 
 outer bay of Guantanamo and the hills overlook- 
 ing Fisherman's Point were as placid and un- 
 troubled as a summer resort. A varying number 
 of colliers lay at anchor within Fisherman's 
 Point, the Panther was anchored close beside the 
 camp, the Solace rode in the smooth sheltered 
 waters of the bay, the Marblehead, as flagship of 
 the station, steamed here and there, the cable 
 office was re-established and officially known 
 as Pleya del Este, vessels from the block- 
 ading squadron came and went, rowboats and 
 launches moved rapidly about, no Spaniard 
 was to be seen, and that which was the theater 
 of a seven-days' continuous performance of 
 unrest, distress and bloodshed became so peace- 
 ful that the captured Spaniard's letter dolefully 
 describing the American occupation of Guan- 
 tanamo Bay as the matter of fact conversion of 
 the place into "a harbor of rest" exactly fitted 
 the transformation. 
 
V2 The Fall of Santiago. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 HOW SHAFTER LANDED HIS ARMY AT DAIQUIRI. 
 
 When Huntington's marines were landed at 
 Guantanamo Bay it was in the expectation that 
 the army of investment would reach Santiago 
 almost immediately thereafter. It was three 
 weeks, however, before the transports, with 
 their fifteen thousand and odd American soldiers, 
 were sighted by the blockading fleet. 
 
 Major-General William Eufus Shafter, in com- 
 mand of the Fifth Army Corps, had been selected 
 to lead the army of invasion, and Tampa was 
 chosen as the point of debarkation. As has been 
 intimated, the dispatch of an army largely com- 
 posed of unseasoned men is a task that might try 
 the capabilities of a quartermaster's department 
 accustomed to the active operations at homo and 
 abroad of an enormous standing army ; but when 
 it meant the sudden call upon a department used 
 only to the gentle and easy demands of a tiny 
 standing army accustomed only to garrison life 
 and police duties on the plains, it became a matter 
 whose exactions can scarcely be measured. 
 
The Fall of Santiago. 73 
 
 The invading army consisted of the following 
 forces : 
 
 Infantry — 
 
 Officers 561 
 
 Enlisted men 10,709 
 
 11,270 
 
 Cavalry (Dismounted) — 
 
 Officers 168 
 
 Enlisted men 3,155 
 
 3,323 
 
 Artillery — 
 
 Officers 18 
 
 Enlisted men 455 
 
 473 
 
 Engineers — 
 
 Officers 9 
 
 Enlisted men 200 
 
 209 
 
 Signal Cokfs 15 
 
 15,290 
 Total Fighting Men — 
 
 Officers . 747 
 
 Enlisted men 14,319 
 
 15,066 
 
 Fieldpieces 24 
 
 Horses 578 
 
 Mules 1,301 
 
 For throe weeks things at Tampa were chaotic. 
 The water supply was short; machinery broke 
 down ; siege guns had to be carried bodily for 
 miles; embarkation stages had to be built; sup- 
 ply trains were stalled; mules and horses that 
 should have arrived had been left behind in some 
 unknown locality ; troops were coming in from a 
 
74 The Fall of Santiago. 
 
 dozen different camps in a dozen different stages 
 of unpreparedness— such were a few of the 
 tangles, drawbacks and diflQculties which had to 
 be met, unraveled, and conquered before the 
 great transport fleet could get on her way. 
 
 Every one, from Shafter down, was in a fever- 
 ish condition of fume and fret. The war fury of 
 the soldiers was rapidly changing into one of 
 weariness and disgust, while the foreign repre- 
 sentatives who peered everywhere and watched 
 everything, confided to their respective govern- 
 ments that the army of invasion was an armed 
 mob and that the quartermaster's department 
 had gone to pieces. As a plain matter of fact, 
 the work done in the way of licking raw material 
 into shape, and in the arming, equipping, and 
 forwarding of Shafter's army compared most 
 favorably with anything done in the same line 
 by nations who are adepts in the art of war. It 
 was May 29 when Schley's dispatch was re- 
 ceived saying that Cervera was in Santiago har- 
 bor, and it was on the 14th of June that the 
 army for Santiago sailed from Tampa, an inter- 
 val of only sixteen days in which inventive 
 spirit, Yankee push, and the indomitable con- 
 quest of obstacles had done all that could have 
 been accomplished by the practiced military ex- 
 perts and well-oiled war bureaus of Europe. 
 
The Fall of Santiago. Y5 
 
 There was impatience everywhere, of course; 
 in the press, at headquarters in Washington, and 
 with the blockading fleet. Every day the lookouts 
 off Santiago watched for the smoke of the trans- 
 port armada coming around Cape Maysi, and as 
 each day closed with the report that there was 
 nothing in sight, that impatience grew. Upon 
 Admiral Sampson devolved not only the duty of 
 pi-eventing the escape of Cervera's fleet, but also 
 that of preventing if possible the junction of the 
 various divisions of the Spanish army which were 
 known to be scattered up and down the eastern 
 end of the island and which he was sure would 
 be making every effort to effect a concentration 
 in Santiago city. Envoys were sent to General 
 Calixto Garcia, asking him to move his forces of 
 insurgents down to the southern coast so as to 
 hold if possible the passes leading from Mau- 
 zanillo and Holquin through which the various 
 Spanish garrisons would have to come. To this 
 Garcia replied by sending General Eabi to the 
 north of Santiago with nine hundred men, and 
 six hundred, under Castillo, to the east of the 
 city, while he, Garcia, established his headquar- 
 ters at Aceraderos, fourteen miles west of Santi- 
 ago, to await the arrival of the American troops. 
 As further and useful ways of passing the wait- 
 ing time, there was more cable cutting and 
 
Y6 The Fall of Santiago. 
 
 another striking attention was given to the forts 
 guarding the entrance to Santiago harbor. 
 There were several small exchanges with the 
 forts, but the only two of consequence, in addi- 
 tion to that which they received at the hands of 
 Schlej' soon after his arrival, were the bombard- 
 ments of the forts by the entire blockading fleet, 
 which took place on the 6th and IGth of June. 
 
 The endeavors to reduce the harbor fortifica- 
 tions on these two dates wore valuable as 
 lessons and practice, but so far as the reduction 
 of the forts went they were practically without 
 result. We learned again at Santiago what the 
 allied forces had learned at Sebastopol and Cron- 
 stadt, and what we had learned at Charleston. 
 When the shells fell unpleasantly near the gun- 
 ners they left their guns, and when the bombard- 
 ment was over the damages were repaired and the 
 forts and batteries were in as good fighting trim 
 as before. During these two bombardments our 
 ships expended ammunition to the value of three 
 hundred thousand dollars, killed and wounded 
 less than three hundred Spaniards, and at the 
 conclusion of the engagements Morro was practi- 
 cally unscathed and the earthworks practically as 
 good as ever. 
 
 Nor did these bombardments result in drawing 
 a verj- heavy Spanish fire, the return from all 
 
The Fall of Santiago. 77 
 
 the fortifications being extremely small and de- 
 liberate. Not more than ton per cent, of the 
 guns in place was used, and if our attacks were 
 practically without result the Spanish reply was 
 absolutely unproductive of harm. 
 
 Neither can the bombardment by the dynamite 
 cruiser or gunboat Vesuvius bo said to have 
 effected the "tremendous revolution in naval 
 warfare" which some people expected of her. 
 The first use of the Vesuvius was on Mondaj', 
 June 13. Commander Pillsbury had been beg- 
 ging Sampson ever since his arrival off Santiago 
 for permission to try his three pneumatic tubes, 
 and on Monday night he gained the admiral's 
 consent. It was dark as a pit's mouth all about 
 the harbor entrance, and under cover of this 
 blackness the Vesuvius crept up to within three- 
 quarters of a mile and fired her first gun. 
 
 The term is used only as a colloquialism, for as 
 one of description it is entirely inaccurate. 
 When the Vesuvius discharged her shell there 
 was no smoke, no flash and, in place of an explo- 
 sion, a peculiar husky, wheezing sound, as 
 though — so said the sailors in homely but ex- 
 pressive phrase — some gigantic cow had been 
 choked with an enormous turnip and were trying 
 to cough it up. But, while the emission and 
 flight of the projectile — a contact exploding 
 
78 The Fall of Santiago. 
 
 shell containing two hundred pounds of gun 
 cotton — were noiseless, the landing of the mis- 
 sile was thunderous. Three shells at this time 
 were fired, all three exploded on impact and 
 each explosion was as though there had been 
 some convulsion of nature — not so much a deaf- 
 ening sound as an all-pervading and appalling 
 concussion. 
 
 Here again, while it was proved that the Vesu- 
 vius could successfully discharge her gun-cotton 
 shells, that these shells would traverse a great 
 distance, that impact meant detonation, and that 
 detonation meant a convulsion of the country- 
 Bide — this practically limited the accomplish- 
 ment of her bombardment. It was found after- 
 ward — and following other bombardments — that 
 where the shells struck they changed the topog- 
 raphy of the coast, and that the demoralizing 
 effect of a silently emitted shell that shook the 
 hills and jilowcd up the valleys when it struck 
 homte was very great, but it was also found that 
 the fact of the vessel's being her own gun-car- 
 riage and the fixed elevation of the tubes meant 
 that it was almost impossible to aim accurately 
 at a fortified eminence. The Vesuvius where her 
 tubes could be brought to bear on an extended 
 area, well in range, and chiefly within the 
 limited parabola of her shells' flight, would 
 
The Fall of Santiago. 79 
 
 doubtless be a tremendous engine of destructive- 
 ness, but the fact remains that she did not tear 
 up a single fort off Santiago nor send a single 
 gun flying into space. 
 
 Meanwhile the armada of invasion was being 
 rushed into sailing form, and at last the final 
 rendezvous of the fleet was made just inside the 
 bar at the mouth of Tampa Baj' at 3 :50 p.m. June 
 14, and two hours later it got under way. The 
 mobilization of the transport fleet had been ac- 
 complished with much shuttle work between the 
 various points of rendezvous, but when it had 
 formed into fair sailing order and was steaming 
 across the waters of the gulf it formed a naval 
 pageant whose like had not been seen since the 
 days of Philip of Spain and ]prake. 
 
 Stretching over twenty miles of sea and mov- 
 ing slowly ahead at a seven-knot rate the 
 great fleet advanced in throe parallel columns. 
 In number they were forty; in formation the 
 transports kept in triple column, preceded and 
 flanked by the armed convoys. At the head of 
 the central column of transports steamed the 
 Detroit with pennant flj'ing; while to the right of 
 the troop ships were aligned the Indiana, Anna- 
 polis, Castine and Panther. In patrol duty the 
 Bancroft flitted along to the left; the Hornet and 
 Scorpion steamed in among the troop ships like 
 
80 The Fall of Santiago. 
 
 marshals at a parade to keep the procession well 
 in order, while the Helena brought up the rear. 
 As in a proccssiou, too, sometimes the divisions 
 would become ill spaced. Then the whole parade 
 would halt and the little steaming, puffing 
 marshals would scurry here and there, driving 
 the laggard into place or keeping back too restive 
 a member, while the transport steamers marked 
 time by rolling and pitching in the short run- 
 ning seas. All around, like the uneasy boys on 
 the street flitted the press dispatch boats and 
 private craft attracted by the novelty, danger and 
 excitement of the event. 
 
 Guarded, though it was, by warships and 
 moving though it might be into the enemy's 
 waters, there was nothing about the whole fleet 
 that would indicate impending fight. It was, 
 rather, the ostentatious, open order of a floating 
 armament devised as a spectacle. Far as the 
 eye could reach the ships spread out covering 
 the sea, as open to the enemy's view as though 
 it had been a moving continent. The guns of 
 the great pyramidical Indiana boomed out a 
 salute to the commanding general, the Bancroft 
 howled orders through her siren, and so vast 
 was the formation that had an enemy attacked 
 the rear the Indiana could not have seen it even 
 from her fighting tops. 
 
The Fall of Santiago. 81 
 
 There was a bright sunshine, sky and sea 
 were both of the vivitlest blue, and oyer sky 
 and sea both there rushed white flecks — these of 
 clouds, those of foam. The decks of the ships 
 were crowded with men; right at the head of the 
 middle column flew a dark-blue flag with its 
 Maltese cross at the foremast head of the Sagur- 
 anca, the headquarters of General Shafter; 
 orders were shouted hero and there through the 
 megaphone; the hospital ship steamed about 
 like a doctor on his visits inquiring the health of 
 his patients in reply to the sick signal, and so 
 with running seas, bright skies by day and 
 lighted ships hy night the great armada moved 
 majestically along. 
 
 On Friday, June 17, those on the transport 
 fleet caught the first sight of the Cuban coast, a 
 white lighthouse on the outlying key of Paredon 
 Grande. Then on Saturday the mainland came 
 into view — hazy hills along Cape Lucretia; 
 Sunday morning the fleet turned into the Wind- 
 ward Passage; CapeMaysi was rounded at night, 
 and early on the morning of Monday, June 21, 
 the seventh day of the fleet's journey from Port 
 Tampa, the great broken Sierras that lie around 
 Santiago came into view. 
 
 As an evidence of the impatience with which 
 the arrival of the transport fleet had been awaited, 
 
82 The Fall of Santiago 
 
 &^ 
 
 the two tugs. Resolute and Wompatuck, were 
 seen by the lookout men on board the Indiana 
 steaming about Cape Maysi like pilots on the 
 lookout for a patron, and another evidence was 
 observed when these same lookout men saw that 
 as soon as tho watching tugs caught a glimpse of 
 Shafter's armada they scurried away with the 
 news toward Santiago. Next the Detroit caught 
 the infection of impatience, and when the fleet 
 was abreast of Guantanamo she put on full steam 
 and raced with the tugs for first place in carry- 
 ing the news. 
 
 As the great sea procession moved slowly into 
 view of the blockading fleet the waiting sailors 
 burst into a mightj'- cheer, and as the line of 
 massive gray hulks was seen by the fighting men 
 on board the transports they sent back the cheer. 
 And so it went on in a majestic and inspiring 
 antiphonal of hurrahs that must have crossed 
 the hills and reached Santiago itself. The flag- 
 ship fired a salute and sent the Admiral's launch 
 to welcome Shafter, while with signals flying the 
 great transport fleet wheeled into position with 
 every ship's bows facing Santiago. 
 
 For the sailors it meant that something was to 
 be done beside swinging up and down in the oily 
 waters of the Caribbean Sea or firing shells at 
 ever demolished and ever repaired earthworks; 
 
Copyright hv Mail ari.l Express. 
 
 The first landing place of the An: 
 
troops in Cuba — -View of Daiquir. 
 
Tlic Fall of Santiago. 83 
 
 ^vllilo to the soldiers it meant something more 
 than tho dreary routine of camp life, the vexa- 
 tion of contradictory orders and tho cramped life 
 of tho transports. For both, it meant action 
 and war at last. 
 
 Early next morning, that is, on Tuesday, June 
 21, Shafter and Sampson went ashore at the little 
 landing-place of Aceraderos to meet Garcia and 
 discuss the best location for landing the troops. 
 Garcia was in favor of landing there and advanc- 
 ing on Santiago from the west, and Sampson was 
 inclined to agree with him, but Shafter, who had 
 closely inspected tho coast from a launch tho day 
 before, and who had studied the best available 
 maps, decided in favor of Daiquiri, fifteen miles 
 to the east of tho Santiago harbor. The Gen- 
 eral's two chief reasons for this selection were 
 that from Daiquiri could be gained the command 
 of a great plateau directly overlooking Santiago 
 and that the covo contained a railroad wharf. 
 Deference was naturally paid to the wish of tho 
 general iu command, and the conference broke 
 up after settling the plans of co-operation on the 
 part of the fleet and insurgents. 
 
 Daiquiri deserves a paragraph to itself. At it 
 the coast range of Santiago Province, known as 
 the Sierra Cobre, ends in a great peak or mas- 
 sive pile of rocks called La Gran Piedra, which 
 
84 The Fall of Santiago 
 
 to" 
 
 seems to rise abruptly from the sea. It does 
 not, however, drop sheer iuto the sea, but puts 
 out a number of rugged spurs which have been 
 cleft in some cataclysm iuto a series of sharply 
 cut rocky formations separated by well-defined 
 chasms or gullies. To some poetic-souled Span- 
 iard, these massive, steep-sided rock masses con- 
 veyed the impression of altars, and so the locality 
 is set down on some maps as Las Altares. Between 
 the beach and the mountain peak stretches a 
 terrace some fifty feet above the water, and on 
 this terrace had been built a little settlement of 
 some twenty frame houses, owned by the Span- 
 ish American Iron Company, largely controlled 
 by the Carnegie Corporation at Pittsburg. The 
 company had been formed to exploit the iron 
 mines which lie ten miles away in the mountains 
 overlooking Santiago harbor. Between the mines 
 and the landing-place the company had also built 
 a railroad which at Daiquiri ended in a trestle 
 bridge and loading chutes, a wharf, a machine 
 shop, and roundhouse. The surf thunders cease- 
 lessly in on all the coast except in one little cove 
 to the west of the railroad wharf, and through this 
 break and at this wharf and along the sparse 
 stretches of coral beach it was that the landing 
 took place on the morning of "Wednesday, June 
 22. 
 
The Fall of Santiago. 85 
 
 Before the laudiug, however, the blockading 
 fleet had its i)art to play. That part was a dual 
 one. First to insure as nearly as possible a safe 
 landing for the troops, and secondly to confuse 
 the Spaniards as to the selected place of landing. 
 To carry out the second part of this programme 
 the Cubans counterfeited a scene of great prep- 
 aration at Aceraderos and decoy transports 
 sailed into Cabanas Bay, a small inlet about two 
 miles distant from the entrance. For the first 
 part of the itrogramme Sampson treated the men 
 on the transports to a sight which they will never 
 forget. It was that of twenty miles of bombard- 
 ment. East and west of Santiago harbor the 
 great fleet of warships stretched along the shore, 
 hurling shells at Aguadorcs, Cabanas, Siboncy, 
 Juragua, Daiquiri, and wherever a roundhouse 
 was noticed, an earthwork seen, or a blockhouse 
 flag distinguished. 
 
 The feature of this twenty miles of bombard- 
 ment was the long distance duel between the 
 Texas and the Socapa battery. It was remark- 
 able for two things. First, as an engagement 
 between a single battleship and a shore battery 
 in which the ship shelled the fort to a standstill, 
 and secondly, as furnishing the unusual example 
 of a Spanish cannoneer hitting his mark and kill- 
 ing his man. The engagement grew out of the 
 
86 The Fall of Santiago. 
 
 feiut wliich had been planned for Cabanas 
 Bay. 
 
 Ten transports had been ordered to make a 
 pretense of landing troops there, and the Texas, 
 Scorpion and Vixen had been ordered to shell 
 the blockhouse and surrounding hills as if 
 covering the landing. During the night of 
 June 21-22, the Texas steamed into the shadow 
 of the Cabanas mountains, and daj-light found 
 her there waiting for the transports. At seven 
 o'clock four of these appeared and the Texas, to 
 get the shore range, fired a half-dozen riile shots. 
 They were immediately answered by a gun from 
 high-perched Socapa — a shell in splendid line 
 whistling over the mastheads as the puff of white 
 smoke rose above the fort. The range was found 
 to be five thousand yards and the accuracy of 
 the Spanish gunner at that long distance was 
 such a thorough surprise that Captain Philip 
 decided to give the feint a larger proportion of 
 actuality than had been intended. 
 
 The port twelve-inch turret gun was trained 
 on Socapa, and as its report shook the ship a 
 cloud of red dust was seen to rise over the Span- 
 ish guns. Forging slowly but steadily nearer, 
 the Texas followed this first shot with a contin- 
 ued and well-aimed fire from the big guns of her 
 port battery. Hit after hit was counted, but 
 
The Fall of Santiago. 87 
 
 unfortunately the Texas had no explosive shells 
 for her turret guus and could only use the solid, 
 armor-piercing shot. It was the crushing force 
 of the impact, therefore, and not the rending of 
 an explosion on which the Texas gunners had to 
 rely for the damage done and which, of course, 
 materially limited the area of possible injury. 
 Each shot was reported to Captain Philip, and 
 aiming instructions given from the bridge. The 
 Spanish reply was fierce and the most accurate 
 that had been experienced. Shells from the 
 Socapa guns moaned over the ship's deck, 
 splashed the water about her, rattled exploding 
 fragments all over her sides and at last struck 
 her fairly. The Indiana, Oregon, Massachusetts, 
 Iowa, and Brooklyn were all lying a few miles 
 away from the encounter, but none thought it 
 worth while taking a hand in the duel, holding 
 that the Texas was able to take care of herself. 
 And BO it proved, the battery being fought to a 
 standstill by the Texas and her solid shot in an 
 hour and a half. 
 
 The Spaniard's shell was not only noteworthy 
 as killing the first man on an American vessel 
 during the Santiago campaign, but as furnish- 
 ing a valuable example of the apalling force and 
 destructive qualities of a modern projectile. 
 The shell that struck the Texas was six inches 
 
88 The Fall of Santiago. 
 
 in diameter, was of steel and weighed about 
 seventy-five pounds. It struck the ship's side 
 on the port bow about five feet below the main 
 deck and burst in the forward compartment where 
 there were six 6-pounder guns, three on either 
 side. The crews of all these guns were at quar- 
 ters, although they had not been in action, and 
 the miracle is that instead of only one man killed 
 and eight wounded, the entire fifteen were not 
 blown into fragments. 
 
 At the point of impact the ship's side consisted 
 of steel plates one and a quarter inches thick, 
 the shell piercing it like so much paper; or 
 rather, like so much parchment, the tough metal 
 being folded back in long strips. Sotrifiing had 
 been the resistance of the steel that the shell 
 slipped through it without exploding, and would 
 in all probability have passed out on the other 
 side unexploded had it not struck a metal stan- 
 chion amidships. The stanchion was shivered 
 for about two feet of its length, the shell burst, 
 and, while many fragments flew from the explo- 
 sion as a common center, the larger mass of the 
 broken shell flew forward against the starboard 
 side and bulged out the stout steel plates until 
 they stood as a ridge on the ship's side three 
 inches high. 
 
 AYhere this bulge occurred and on the inside 
 
Cnpy right by Mail an J Expres 
 
 Debarkation of Shatter's 
 
of Invasion at Daiquiri. 
 
The Fall of Santiago. 89 
 
 of the ship one of tlic big doubleheaded angle 
 irons of the ship's frame was situated. It was 
 of steel, nearly twice as thick and heavy as a rail- 
 road rail, yet two feet of it were scooped out 
 and carried away as though chipped off by a 
 cold chisel. The base of the shell took a down- 
 ward direction after cutting through the stan- 
 chion, plowed a great furrow through the steel 
 deck, hit and broke a steel rib of the ship, broke 
 itself and buried its pieces down through four 
 feet of hemp hawser wound around a cable reel 
 which stood close to the starboard side and shiv- 
 ered the two-foot prism of solid oak on which 
 the hawser was wound. By the explosion of the 
 shell and the fractures made by coming into con- 
 tact with the stanchion and ribs the shell was 
 resolved into a flying hail of steel splinters 
 which swept along the starboard side for nearly 
 thirty feet, cutting off bolt heads, breaking gun- 
 fittings and actually planing off the paint from 
 the ship's side as cleanly as though it had been 
 laboriously done by hand. The fragmentary 
 result of the explosion was very remarkable. 
 The pieces of steel which were rained every- 
 where through the compartment weighed about 
 an ounce each, the only fragment of any size 
 being rather less than half of the base of the 
 shell and it was from that fragment that the size 
 of the projectile was learned. 
 
90 The Fall of Santiago. 
 
 The man who was killed was directly in the 
 path of the shell at the moment of its explosion, 
 and he was literally blown to pieces, although, 
 strangely enough, the comrade to whom he was 
 talking, and who stood at less than an arm's 
 length away, escaped unhurt, except for being 
 knocked down by the force of the explosion. 
 Every other man within radius of the flying frag- 
 ments was wounded; and not only wounded, but 
 wounded, so to speak, profusely. One gunner 
 was hit with no fewer than fifteen pieces of steel, 
 each about the size of a hazelnut, while other 
 men thirty feet away from the line of shot were 
 found to have a dozen pieces or more of shell in 
 their bodies. 
 
 Lastly, as an example of the destructive force 
 of the exploding shell, it may be stated that, when 
 it burst, the gunpowder smoke was forced by the 
 concussion down the ammunition hoists, and into 
 the forward compartments of the ship in such 
 volumes that for a few minutes the crew below 
 were almost suffocated. 
 
 This, it is repeated, was the first time that our 
 men had had the opportunity to observe the 
 havoc caused by a modern steel shell filled with 
 high explosives, and as Captain Philip looked at 
 the wrecked compartment and the dead and 
 wounded he was heard to say : 
 
The Fall of Santiago. 91 
 
 "Well, if a six-inch shell did all that, what 
 would a thirteen-incher do?" 
 
 Ever since the arrival of the blockading fleet 
 outside Santiago, General Linares, in command 
 of the Spanish military forces of Santiago Prov- 
 ince, had prepared for what he knew must come. 
 Every possible landing-place had been fortified, 
 and naturally in this series of defenses Daiquiri 
 had not escaped attention. Indeed, Daiquiri 
 had been especially looked after, up to a certain 
 point. When our troops landed there they found 
 what was I'ealb' a magnificent system of defense, 
 earthworks, trenches, pits, breastworks, every- 
 thing indeed, except the one essential — that of 
 artillery. When the bombardment began there 
 were five hundred Sjianiards in charge of these in- 
 trenchments, but when the Helena, Hornet and 
 Bancroft tore great gashes in the scrub and brush 
 of the hillsides Avith their shells ; dropped a few 
 6-inch explosives among the earthworks; filled 
 up tbe rifle pits with fountains of gravel and 
 dust and even demolished the blockhouse on top 
 of the La Gran Piedra, the garrison concluded 
 that any attempt to keep out the American army 
 of invasion would be somewhat futile. 
 
 Steaming down in full view of this theatric act ' 
 of war the transports formed outside Daiquiri, 
 while the signal went upon the Saguaranca, 
 
92 The Fall of Santiago. 
 
 "Everybody get ashore. " Instantly the flotilla 
 of whaleboats, gigs, barges, and launches which 
 had hung around the transports got into motion. 
 The troopers rushed down the gangway, clam- 
 bered over the side ladders, pushed their way 
 into the boats, a laughing, cheering, jostling 
 crowd, and loaded the boat to the gunwales in 
 their eagerness to get ashore. As the first boat, 
 in tow of the steam launches, started from the 
 fleet a few Spaniards who had taken refuge be- 
 hind the blockhouse, ran out and began firing 
 at the loaded boats. As they did so a thousand 
 Cubans who had been brought down during the 
 night from Aceraderos under charge of General 
 Castillo, burst from the woods as if by magic 
 and began firing on the Spaniards. These broke 
 and ran for cover into the western woods, while 
 the New Orleans and Detroit steamed along shore 
 and hastened their departure with a few shells. 
 
 All day long the lauding went on. Quietly 
 cruising here and there like great sentries on 
 patrol were the vessels of war; in uneven ranks 
 the transports rolled in the short running waves; 
 and between these and tlie shore there was a con- 
 stant procession of laden-going and empty-re- 
 turning boats and puffing launches. All around 
 on the shore side of the view stretched the open 
 crescent of liills, wooded from verge to summit. 
 
The Fall of Santiago. 93 
 
 Ou Iho closer bills could bo seen tbe long ebaggy 
 leaves of the palms, tbe towering cocoanut trees 
 lifting their froudcd beads above the lower 
 woods; as a background, a purple peak four 
 thousand feet high; as a foreground, beetling 
 cliffs and wooded glades; and as sounds, tbe 
 cheery cry of American voices, the unending call 
 of tbe chafing sea and the wild vivas of Castillo's 
 men as they trooped down to tbe landing-place 
 to welcome the first of the armies of liberation 
 after having disposed of tho Spaniards in tbe 
 woods. 
 
 There bad been delay, disappointment and 
 drag in tbe collection and shipping of Shafter's 
 army, there was none in its debarkation. When 
 night came about twenty small boats bad been 
 smashed at tbe landing-wharf by tbe surf, two 
 colored troopers of the Tenth Cavalry bad been 
 drowned from an overturned boat, a few horses 
 and mules had been drowned while trying to 
 swim ashore, but otherwise ten thousand troops 
 bad landed on an enemy's country without mis- 
 hap and with a celerity and order that will 
 always stand as a precedent in the science of 
 campaigning. 
 
 Next day, in order to further expedite the 
 landing, those transports having artillery and 
 tbe balance of supplies were sent to Siboney 
 
94 The Fall of Santiago. 
 
 Cove, five miles westward. Wednesday night 
 saw the camp fires sparkling all over the valley 
 and beach around Daiquiri ; and Thursday night 
 found the men who had lit these camp fires a 
 long line of marching men with its advance mak- 
 ing for Santiago, and other camp fires sparkling 
 all over the valley and beach around picturesque, 
 but ill-starred Sibouey. 
 
The Fall of Santia^ro. 95 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 HOW THE ROUGH lUDEKS FOUGHT AT LA GUASIMA. 
 
 Broadly speaking, Sbaftcr's plan of campaign 
 was to push his men forward as rapidly as possi- 
 ble after landing, to drive the enemy back to- 
 ward Santiago, and not to stop in his march on 
 to Santiago until ho occupied the plateau and 
 heights which immediately looked down on and 
 commanded the city. He knew from the Cuban 
 scouts that between that point of vantage and 
 Daiciuiri the Spanish lay in strength; and he 
 knew from what he had seen from shipboard and 
 the inspection of maps that between Santiago 
 and Dai<iuiri lay fifteen miles of the roughest 
 country and dense tropical jungle. Roads, how- 
 ever, that were down on the map in large invit- 
 ing lines turned out, on actual inspection, to be 
 but bridle paths which became mud streams after 
 each downpour, while the transportation of artil- 
 lery to the front would moan a gigantic task for 
 the engineers whose complete fulfillment would 
 take a far longer time than he in his impatience 
 
96 The Fall of Santiago. 
 
 was willing to consider. But some semblance of 
 work on the roads was an actual necessity, and 
 in order to cover this preparatory work and to 
 clear the territory immediately surrounding the 
 landing, General Shafter deemed it essential to 
 occupy Siboney, a village occupying a command- 
 ing position eleven miles up the coast from 
 Daiquiri and eight across country from Santiago. 
 
 Not waiting, therefore, for the cavalry horses, 
 siege artillery and balance of the troops, Shafter, 
 in pursuance of his impetuous plans, sent forward 
 General Joseph Wheeler with nine hundred and 
 sixty-four men from his cavalry division, made 
 up of eight troops of Colonel Wood's regiment 
 (the Rough Eiders), numbering five hundred; 
 four troops of the First Regular Cavalry, num- 
 bering two hundred and forty -four men; and 
 four troops of the Tenth Cavalry (colored), num- 
 bering two hundred and twenty, all dismounted. 
 The Rough Riders had iJeaded for advance duty 
 and Shafter obliged them. 
 
 These Rough Riders furnished the picturesque 
 element of the army. At the very outbreak of 
 hostilities, and indeed before the actual declara- 
 tion of war, there were vague rumors in the 
 newspapers of the contemplated formation of a 
 cavalry regiment for the Cuban campaign that 
 should be something conjointly approaching a 
 
Tlie Fall of Santiago. 97 
 
 Buffalo Bill sLow, a round-up of "Western coAvboys 
 and a congregation of cross-country huntsmen. 
 Tbo credit for tLo initiative of the idea lies in 
 aiuiablo dispute between General Miles and Theo- 
 dore Roosevelt, but from the very first the name 
 of Roosevelt was more intimately associated in the 
 public mind with the idea than that of any one 
 else. 
 
 When war broke out ho was Assistant Secre- 
 tary of the Navy, but immediately following 
 on McKinlcy's proclamation he resigned and was 
 by the president named as Lieutenant-Colonel of 
 the First United States Volunteer Cavalry, of 
 which Captain Leonard Wood, assistant surgeon 
 in the regular army, was appointed Colonel. The 
 work of organization was immediately begun by 
 Colonel "Wood and aides, who chose the Western 
 States as the best recruiting ground from which 
 to select their men. Dr. "Wood, as he was general- 
 ly known, was admirably adapted for this recruit- 
 ing work, having had a long experience in West- 
 ern army life. Truth to tell, there was little 
 need of recruiting, for with the first intimation 
 that the regiment was to be an accomplished 
 fact, the War Department was swamped with 
 appeals for information as to points at which 
 enlistments might be made. 
 
 Every man in the country who could ride a 
 
98 The Fall of Santiago. 
 
 horse, or who had an inclination to do so, ap- 
 peared to imagine that he was the man of all men 
 who should be a trooper. Colonel Wood was, 
 however, determined that his regiment should 
 only contain the very best of horsemen and 
 fighting material. The line was drawn rigor- 
 ously at toughs and incapables. Every man was 
 a picked man and when the regiment was finally 
 declared to be completed at San Antonio, Texas, 
 it proved to be an aggregation of extremes, 
 record and experience that was unique in mili- 
 tary history. The members ranged from cotil- 
 lion leader to bronco buster, from society roy- 
 sterer to policeman, from dead-shot cowboy to 
 champion golfer, from a record-making college 
 runner to a steer brander of Skull Valley, from a 
 champion football player of the East to a bear 
 hunter of the West. Dancers, polo players, 
 good fellows, old soldiers, bad men, firemen — ■ 
 the wildest congregation of dudes and dare- 
 devils surely that was ever brought together. A 
 few of the names and a word of those who bore 
 them should find a place here. 
 
 "Dead Shot Jim" Simpson, from Albuquerque, 
 N. M., could put a rifle ball through a jack 
 rabbit's eyes while riding a wild horse a thou- 
 sand yards off. Woodbury Kane, a cousin of 
 John Jacob Astor, was equally at home as a polo 
 
The Fall of Santiago. 99 
 
 player and a yachtsman. "Lariat Ned" Per- 
 kins, from Trinidad, Col., had the reputation of 
 being able to make his twisted rope as deadly 
 as a rifle. AVillio Tiffany, of New York, was 
 a cousin of the Belmonts, the nephew of Com- 
 modore Perry and an authority on fine raiment. 
 "Eocky Mountain Bill" Jenkins was a mighty 
 hunter of the grizzly and was, literally, always 
 loaded for bear. Hamilton Fish, Jr., of New 
 York, was the descendant of a long line of 
 famous men and had established a reputation in 
 which energy and animal spirits were only 
 equaled bj' good fellowship and lovable disposi- 
 tion. "Bronco George" Brown, of Arizona, 
 had killed his five men, but they all went down for 
 cattle stealing, for cheating at cards, or for im- 
 pudence to women. Eeggie Eeynolds, son of 
 Mrs. Lorillard B. Eeynolds, was quarterback on 
 a Yale team and a handshaking acquaintance of 
 the Prince of Wales. "Fighting Bob" "Wilson, 
 of Wyoming, was the terror of the rustlers on his 
 range. I. Townsend Burden, Jr., was the son of 
 a great millionaire of New York City, and proud 
 of his record on the football field. 
 
 And so, with much dust and jingle of spurs, 
 the plainsmen and mountaineers of the West 
 came trooping into San Antonio; with valets, 
 bathtubs, and dress-suit cases, the dudes and 
 
100 The Fall of Santiago. 
 
 brokers of the East rolled into town in parlor 
 cars ; with the outfits of the fop, the handbag of 
 the hardy experienced man, and with no kits at 
 all, save the things on his back and the beast 
 he bestrode, the Eough Eiders gathered together. 
 
 But when once together every division of class 
 and belonging was swept away. There was com- 
 radeship from the start, for each man was a 
 United States trooper, sworn to serve his coun- 
 try and to fight for it at thirteen dollars a mouth 
 with rations and uniform. The uniform, by the 
 bye, was as picturesque as the men. Made of 
 gray grass cloth, cool and light of texture, with 
 pipings and facings of blue, with a sombrero 
 turned up and fastened at the side with a rosette, 
 armed with a Krag-Jorgeusen carbine, two revol- 
 vers and a machete, the Eough Eiders presented 
 a decidedly dashing and warlike appearance. 
 In their camp life they settled down to hard 
 work with an energy, obedience and good will 
 that were glorious. Much of this hard work was 
 given to the breaking and drilling of the horses, 
 yet by one of the ironical strokes of fate the first 
 time the Eough Eiders went into battle they 
 went afoot. 
 
 Such were the Eough Eiders, who with the 
 First Eegulars, a regiment noted in every army 
 post for its steady valor, and the Tenth troopers, 
 
The Fall of Santiago. 101 
 
 with their "Westorn reputation as always wanting 
 to fight and always fighting as devils when that 
 want was gratified, at daybreak of June 23, 
 marched out of Dai(iuiri on the road to Sibonej", 
 accompanied by a body of Cuban scouts. The 
 first halt was made at the little village of Dema- 
 jayabo, and for these and all other names to bo 
 mentioned reference had better be had to the 
 accompanying map. 
 
 That march was a trial to the souls and condi- 
 tion of the men. They had heard of the Cuban 
 forests and the Cuban heat, but the most vivid 
 imagination had pictured nothing approaching 
 the reality. The road was a mule path and not 
 always an ordinarily good mule path at that. 
 AVhere it did not pass through swamps of malo- 
 dorous mud it was a winding lane of irony-red 
 earth, which rose in clouds of dust as the men 
 tramped on, filled their eyes and noses, was plas- 
 tered on their streaming faces, and found its waj- 
 even between the flaps of the buttoned gaiters. 
 On each side of the path rose the thick steamy 
 jungle, so profuse in its vegetation that its en- 
 tangling vines and piercing thorns stretched 
 across it almost at every step. Sometimes there 
 were breaks in the chaparral, but on these open 
 spaces the sun beat down with uninterrupted 
 fervor, so that it was not a relief but rather a 
 
102 The Fall of Santiago. 
 
 choice of evils betAveen the blazing experience of 
 the bare spots and the boiling experience of the 
 woods. As was the case at the fight over the 
 hills at Guantanamo, the men started in heavy 
 accoutrements, in full marching order, but as 
 the day grew and the heat with it, the men 
 threw away not only their blanket rolls and pro- 
 vision haversacks but even their clothing, until 
 the i)ath side looked as though it had been 
 traversed rather by an army in retreat than by 
 one in advance. 
 
 Juragua was reached at night without the 
 faintest opposition from the Spaniards, the Cuban 
 scouts bringing in information that the enemy 
 which had been in some force at Sibouey bad 
 fallen back on the Sevilla road and had halted 
 and intrenched themselves at a small settlement 
 named La Guasima, some three or four miles be- 
 yond Siboney. Many of the men had fallen 
 from exhaustion, and the detachment of Rough 
 Eiders, which had been in charge of the dyna- 
 mite gun, with which it was expected to do great 
 things, had insisted on bringing this weapon 
 with them, so that it was long after dusk when 
 the last stragglers were brought in by the rear- 
 guard. General Castillo, who was in command 
 of the Cuban scouts, made out a rough map of 
 La Guasima for General Wheeler and it was de- 
 
Gen. '•joe" Wheeler. 
 
The Fall of Santiago. 103 
 
 cided to continue the march beyond Siboney at 
 daybreak of the 24:th and attack the Spanish 
 position. 
 
 There were two roads leading to La Guasima, 
 and it was decided to divide the American forces 
 so as to attack the Spaniards from two quarters. 
 Colonel Wood's regiment was sent to approach 
 the enemy on the left hand or mountain road, 
 while Wheeler and Young, with the First and 
 Tenth, and three Hotchkiss mountain guns, were 
 to attack the enemy on the main or valley road. 
 Young's command had somewhat the shorter 
 road and they started by throwing out a strong 
 scouting line in order to give Wood's men a 
 chance to work round to the left. The troopers, 
 as they lay at Juragua, had heard the Spaniards 
 felling the trees before daybreak and judged that 
 they were throwing up barricades, but on ac- 
 count of the echoing hills could not exactly 
 locate the spot from which the sounds came. 
 With the general locality of the Spaniards and 
 the character of their position and their strength 
 General Wheeler was, however, measurably well 
 informed, as his plan of battle indicates. 
 
 In the first confused reports of what follows 
 the belief was entertained that the Kough Eiders 
 had fallen into an ambuscade, but except inso- 
 much as nearly all the Spanish^fighting was done 
 
101 The Fall of Santiam 
 
 o^ 
 
 from tbe ambush of protecting timber, dense 
 screens of foliage and well-hidden rifle pits, the 
 fight at La Guasima scarcely possessed any 
 greater share of an attack from ambush than did 
 the battles of San Juan and El Caney, No 
 clearer refutation of the ambush story is needed 
 than the fact that on the night before the battle 
 General Young sent for Colonel Wood and said 
 to him: 
 
 "Colonel, Castillo's scouts tell me that the 
 Spaniards have taken a very strong position near 
 the junction of the trail over the mountain to 
 Sevilla and the valley road. It is evidently their 
 belief that they can stop or drive us back if we 
 try to advance, but I think the brigade can fight 
 and win the first battle of the war to-morrow 
 morning." 
 
 Althought last to start, the First and Tenth 
 Cavalry men were the first to open the action. 
 The road over which they went cheerily along 
 •was moderately good, and the men being used 
 to hot weather marching made good progress. 
 When they rose from the valley on to one of the 
 foothills which rose in chaotic prodigality all 
 about they discovered the enemy, hurried a 
 Hotchkiss gun to the crest and began blazing 
 away. 
 
 Eight across a narrow valley which lay in front 
 
The Fall of Santiago. 105 
 
 of tliem rose another hill, and on it they plainly 
 distinguished the Spanish position. Tho main 
 body of the Spaniards was posted around two 
 blockhouses near tho summit, flanked by irreg- 
 ular intrenchments of stone and trees. These 
 intrenchments were in the shape of a broad V or 
 horseshoe, the point of which was toward the 
 trail and road where they came together at the 
 foot of the hill. In this position they were en- 
 abled to offer a triple fire against any advancing 
 force. Between tho intrenchments and tho trails 
 was a dense thicket, and as it proved afterward, 
 this thicket was alive with sharpshooters and 
 guerrillas. The main body of the regulars was 
 streaming up the valley road after the advance 
 men with their Hotchkiss, but the Rough Riders 
 could not bo seen owing to the broken nature of 
 the country and its densely wooded character. 
 As a matter of fact, they were, at that time, 
 pushing along the trail which led over the crest 
 of a hill much similar in elevation and character 
 to that occupied by the regulars. If this de- 
 scription is at all clear it will bo seen, therefore, 
 that in the confusion of hills there were three 
 that were distinct points of interest. To the 
 right that occupied by the Regulars, to the left 
 that over which the Rough Riders were climbing 
 and, between these two flanking elevations, the 
 
106 The Fall of Santiago, 
 
 central hill on "which the Spaniards were 
 posted. 
 
 The distance between the two hills occupied 
 by our men was about half a mile. The Hotch- 
 kiss pieces began the fight at seven-thirty, 
 and in reply to the first rattling sweep of the 
 machine guns the whole front of the hill facing 
 them burst into volleys from the Spanish Mau- 
 sers. The troopers were instantly ordered to lie 
 down in the road along which they were strung, 
 General Young's command being "Don't shoot 
 until you see something to shoot at," which he 
 yelled to his men as stripped to the waist they 
 crawled and squirmed into some position from 
 which they could get a chance to see their 
 enemies. Almost immediately thereafter came 
 the crack of the Krag-Jorgensens from Colonel 
 "Wood's men and the engagement was on. 
 
 Meanwhile, the Kough Eiders had pushed their 
 way over the cactus-lined mountain trail. They 
 had marched two miles when they came across 
 the body of a dead Cuban and this evidence of 
 the Spanish whereabouts was sufiicient to admon- 
 ish the men that an especially sharp lookout was 
 necessary. The dead scout was found by the 
 skirmishers of Troop L, which was under com- 
 mand of Captain Allyn K. Capron. He imme- 
 diately deployed his men and sent back word to 
 
The Pall of Santiago. 107 
 
 Colonel Wood of his discovery. The regiment 
 was hurried up, but before it could be well de- 
 ployed the whole line of thickets to their front 
 and right broke out with the sharp, sibillant sing 
 of the Spanish rifles. As at Guantanamo the 
 Spaniards fired in such rapid volleys hy holding 
 the rifle at the hip and pumping the shots out 
 with the quick fanning of the right hand on the 
 lever bar that the discharges actuallj' sounded 
 as though they were from machine guns. 
 
 Word was passed along the American line to 
 fire right and left and in front, and for an hour 
 and a half this fight of gunncrj^ continued. Ow- 
 ing to the facts that the Spanish were so com- 
 pletely under cover and that they used smokeless 
 powder it was almost impossible to direct any 
 answering fire that might be effective, but by 
 careful watching a Spanish head was seen here 
 or there or some sharpshooter was seen slipping 
 from cover to cover, and wherever either head or 
 sharpshooter was seen an American bullet was 
 sure to find its mark. 
 
 In the first blaze of the Mausers' Hamilton 
 Fish was killed. He was in the advance as the 
 head of the skirmishers turned the crest of the 
 hill and though the order to take cover was im- 
 mediate, the commanding position of the Spanish 
 riflemen was such that thej' could send a drop- 
 
108 The Fall of Santiago. 
 
 ping fire into the men as they Ifiy down. Along- 
 side Fish lay Ed Culver, a Cherokee Indian, and 
 the same long Mauser bullet that struck the 
 brave roj'stering aristocrat struck the half-breed, 
 for it passed through Fish's body and lodged in 
 that of Culver. "When Fish was struck he said 
 to Culver: "I am wounded," to which Culver 
 made reply: "And I am killed." But it was 
 not so, for it was Fish who died when they took 
 him back and set him under a tree with his face 
 to the enemy, while the half-breed Indian lived 
 and, though shot through the lung, continued 
 to empty his rifle at the Spaniards until his am- 
 munition pouch was exhausted and the gun fell 
 from his hands. 
 
 Soon after this Captain Capron was shot as he 
 walked along the line cheering his men. He had 
 taken a rifle from a wounded man and was firing 
 when tbe bullet struck him. As the troopers 
 lifted him to carry him to the rear he shook his 
 head and said: "No, place me here. I want to 
 see this thing out." 
 
 And so he did, for they propped up his head 
 so that the firing line was visible, and when the 
 captain died the troopers were chasing down the 
 valley and up the hill and the day was prac- 
 tically won. 
 
 When it was seen that only a desperate charge 
 
The Fall of Santiafro. 109 
 
 o" 
 
 "would ■svin the clay, orders were sent alone; the 
 line fur an advance and tLen began tlio first of 
 those cyclonic rushes which later won Santiago, 
 and which so amazed the Si)aniards. By all the 
 rules of warfare to which they were accustonaed, 
 the Spanish soldiers held an impregnable posi- 
 tion, -while the fire to which the Americans were 
 exposed was one that could only force a retreat. 
 But the Americans had quite another idea and 
 when the word came to advance they leaped from 
 cover with yell that rang from end to end of the 
 line, and went sweeping down the sides of their 
 hills, across the valleys beneath, and up the 
 central mountain. 
 
 As at Guantanamo the long line of men would 
 rush forward, loading as they rushed, then halt 
 with a rock-like poise, aim and fire, and then 
 rush on again. On the right could be heard the 
 screaming negroes of the Tenth, in the center 
 the First Cavalry moved forward like a living 
 wall, while to the left the Eougb Eiders, yelling 
 like Indians, pressed forward, Eoosevelt in the 
 lead with a Xrag-Jorgensen in his hands and 
 yelling as loud as the wildest man from the West. 
 
 The Spanish fire was steady enough for a time, 
 but nothing could stand the charges of our men. 
 So fast was the pace of the soldiers across the 
 valley and up the hill that they threw away their 
 
110 The Fall of Santiago. 
 
 side arms and accouterments in order to move 
 the faster. The Spaniards moved back as the 
 men advanced, but made a stand in the intrench- 
 ments and blockhouse. Between these and the 
 line of advance there was an open space of roll- 
 ing land, some three hundred yards across. It 
 was when the Americans emerged from the bush 
 into this open space that the Spanish made their 
 last attempt to drive back the attacking line, and 
 it was when they saw how the dismounted cav- 
 alrymen swept across the clearing notwithstand- 
 ing the way in which they went down under 
 the close range INIauser fire that they gave up the 
 impossibility of resisting men who did not know 
 when they were beaten, broke and ran. On 
 swept our men, and with a mighty cheer the hill 
 was won, Rough Eiders andEegulars, white and 
 black, shaking hands and cheering again when 
 they found breath — brothers in arms indeed. 
 
 Inside the trenches were many Spanish dead; 
 within the blockhouse were seventeen more, and 
 a long line of wagons with wounded could be 
 seen making its way down the Santiago trail. 
 Altogether and from after reports the estimate 
 is made that the Spanish losses at La Guasima 
 numbered fully one hundred and fifty. Our 
 losses were, of the First United States Volunteer 
 Cavalry, eight killed, thirty-four wounded; of 
 
The Fall of Santiago. Ill 
 
 o 
 
 tbo First IJDitod States Cavalry, seven killed, 
 eight wounded ; of the Tenth United States Cav- 
 alry, one killed, ten wounded ; that is, out of a 
 total strength of nine hundred and sixtj'-four 
 men, sixteen were killed and fifty-two wounded. 
 Beside these losses to the combatants, Edward 
 Marshall, a New York Journal correspondent, was 
 seriously and for a time it was believed fatally 
 wounded. Ho was in the advance with the 
 Hough Riders as they moved up the trail and 
 was plodding, struggling along with the best of 
 them when the murderous volley from the Span- 
 iards stopped the advance. Though warned of 
 his danger he had taken a place underneath a royal 
 palm from which he could note the progress of 
 the fight, when a Mauser bullet passed from the 
 groin, the point of entrance, through the body 
 and shattered the base of the spine. Though 
 told by the surgeons on the field that the blow was 
 ft mortal one, Marshall kept his ground. It was an 
 illustration of another kind of bravery than that 
 of the fighting men. It was the bravery of duty. 
 
112 The Fall of Santiago. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 HOW THE ARMY MAUCHED TO THE FRONT. 
 
 The skirmish of La Guasima took place on June 
 24 ; the first assault on the outposts of Santiago 
 occurred on July 1. Between those dates, how- 
 ever, much was done, and while that much did 
 not include any more brushes Avith the Span- 
 iards, it was a time of hard and testing experi- 
 ence. The story of the great fighting will be 
 found in the next chapters, but he who would 
 read these chapters with understanding had bet- 
 ter read this. 
 
 Anticipatory descriptions, it is true, are al- 
 ways more or less looked upon as halts in a fair- 
 running story, but sometimes these halts are 
 necessary for the full appreciation of the develop- 
 ment of that story. The description of the bat- 
 tles of San Juan and El Caney, however lamely 
 toid, cannot fail to make the pulses beat, but 
 unless one puts oneself more nearly into the 
 place of the American soldier than would be the 
 case should the story jump from the landing at 
 
The Fall of Santiago. 113 
 
 &^ 
 
 Daiquiri to tho dftsh up tho great hills that form 
 the outposts of tho Gran Mesa, one will not get 
 truly into tho very heart of the task •which was 
 set the American soldier to do. 
 
 "When the news of the landing at Daiquiri 
 reached Washington the great war maps of San- 
 tiago were siiread out, and it was noticed with 
 satisfaction that from the landing-place there rau 
 a broad highway over the hills to Santiago. But 
 as was tho case when studying the road that was 
 taken by the Rough Eiders, the inaccuracies of 
 the great map of Cuba, compiled though it was 
 by the Spanish government, were astonishing. 
 For instance, the railroad, which really ends at 
 Daiquiri, is set down as turning inland from a 
 point some five or six miles to the east of its 
 actual terminus. The suburb of El Caney is 
 written Guay, and is located five miles to the 
 west of where it really is; Siboney is not on the 
 maps at all, while towns which are marked inland 
 were found to be on the seacoast, and those 
 which were set down on the cliffs were found to 
 bo miles back in the woods. To add to these 
 contradictions of topography it was found that 
 the residential nomenclature was not at all that 
 of the map-maker, while the Cubans, possibly as 
 another evidence of their love of freedom, had 
 
114 The Fall of Santiago. 
 
 from two to half a dozen different names for the 
 same place. 
 
 But, perplexing as these contradictions and 
 mislocations were, they faded into insignificance 
 before the upset of transportation plans and the 
 new set of physical problems which were caused 
 and presented by the vast difference of what was 
 seen on the maps and what was found on land. 
 In the matter of roads it may be set down at once 
 that the invading army found none that could be 
 called military highways. What it did fifid were 
 trails and bridle paths. On the maps and from 
 the sea were shown and could be seen the larger 
 outlines of the Sierra Cobre, but these broad 
 outlines concealed a mass of smaller, but steep, 
 declivities, cross-running hills, swampy gullies 
 and rocky spurs that lined the face of nature as 
 thickly as do the wrinkles on that of an old 
 Breton fisherwoman. 
 
 The Gran Mesa was to Major-General Shafter 
 the great alluring spot from the very outset. 
 To gain that plateau was the central point of his 
 strategy. That plateau was, as it were, like the 
 palm of an inviting hand laid down midway on 
 the map between Daiquiri and Santiago. To 
 the west of the plateau, that is Santiagowards, 
 it was flanked by a system of hills whose slopes 
 trended down to the city. The occupation of 
 
Cuban scouts on the advance from El Caney to Caimanes to intercept General Pando. 
 
The Fall of Santiago. 115 
 
 tLis plateau thcrofore, with its bulwark of hills, 
 meaut tho cominantl, tho actual investment, of 
 Santiago. To throw his men right across tho 
 country, until it should form a lino across theso 
 uplands, was therefore Shafter's first necessity. 
 It was, to use the same figure of speech, as 
 though, having gained a place on that inviting 
 palm of the Gran Mesa, tho hand w^ero turned 
 until it rested on edge, forming a living line of 
 circumvallation which was to move closer and 
 closer on the invested city. 
 
 Two other factors were to be considered in tho 
 coming fight: First the possible reinforcement of 
 General Linares by General Pando; second, the 
 possible escape of General Linares from Santiago 
 when ho found that the day had gone against 
 him. Shafter had fourteen thousand seven hun- 
 dred men; the best, tho most reliable, estimates 
 placed tho army of Linares at eleven thousand 
 four hundred and thirty, while Pando was re- 
 ported as having nine thousand under him at 
 Holquin. To prevent Linares from slipping 
 away from and Pando from slipping into Santi- 
 ago, therefore, it was an essential that— still 
 keeping to the simile of the hand — the finger 
 tips should be crooked until the living line 
 which it indicated had closed around Santiago 
 Bay on the north and westward. So the moving 
 
116 The Fall of Santiago. 
 
 and crushing process was to go on until Santiago 
 was in the American grasp. 
 
 By looking at the accompanying map it will 
 be seen that were a line drawn across the three 
 points, Aguadores, San Juan and El Caney and 
 then curved around to the westward, it would 
 roughly form a parallel line to that of the Santi- 
 ago Bay shore. These three places, because of 
 their position and because they were the foci of 
 the Spanish defenses, were therefore selected as 
 the three main points in the plan of occupation 
 and investment, with San Juan as the center. El 
 Caney as the right and Aguadores as the left of 
 attack. General Lawton's division was to as- 
 sault El Caney; General Duflield was to march 
 against Aguadores, and Generals Wheeler and 
 Kent were to advance against San Juan. 
 
 This broad outline of Shafter's plan of attack 
 is all that need bo given here. Yv'hat is next to 
 be shown is what our men encountered as they 
 moved into position to carry out this plan of 
 attack. In order that there might be as little 
 congestion as possible and iii pursuance with the 
 commanding officer's policj' of hurry work, the 
 troops were hastened forward from the landing- 
 places as rapidly as possible. The next days 
 saw the entire debarkation of the first army of 
 invasion, this work having been expedited by 
 
The Fall of Santiago. IIY 
 
 to^ 
 
 Bending some of the transports into the adjoin- 
 ing covG of Siboney after it bad been ridden of 
 the enemy by the dismounted cavalry on June 
 24. It was a fatal expoditencss as it proved, for 
 though the selection of this enticing, vine- 
 embowerod little hamlet by the sea was undeni- 
 ably useful as a second and additional point from 
 which to hurry troops inland and now base of 
 supplies, it proved afterward to bo the starting 
 point of a plague that meant a shallow Cuban 
 grave for many a good man. 
 
 In the first days the march toward Santiago 
 was generally begun in the early morning or the 
 late afternoon, but toward the last, regiments, 
 companies and troops wore sent forward at anj- 
 hour, no matter what the position of the sun. 
 Each regiment, company or troop went forward 
 with a swing, but as the days of weary climbing 
 through brush and undergrowth, over rocks and 
 across gullies went on, the very life seemed to 
 go out of the men. 
 
 The curious tourists who will flock to Santiago 
 and walk back over the road from the lovely 
 suburb of El Caney to Daiquiri and note that 
 between the metropolis of eastern Cuba and the 
 landing-place of the iron company there is a 
 road, and a moderately good one, will fail to un- 
 derstand the true character of the Via Dolorosa 
 
118 The Fall of Santiao^o 
 
 C3" 
 
 over which our troops had to make their way. 
 Before these troops had stamped it into some- 
 thing like a roadbed and the engineers had been 
 fitfully at work, before the brush had be^n cut 
 away and the swamps logged into something ap- 
 proaching passability, every step was a labor. 
 Then the roads outside the one main route were 
 simply errant paths through dense tropical for- 
 ests, over sun-scorched patches of desert and 
 through rank grass and tangled weeds which 
 were as ropes and nets to the feet of the men. 
 There were no bridges over the streams, no tres- 
 tles across the gullies, and nowhere were the 
 paths wide enough for two vehicles. What this 
 moment was the trickling remnant of a stream in 
 a rocky bed became a torrential river after five 
 minutes' of cloudburst in the mountains; the 
 engineers' makeshift bridges were swept away 
 time and again; wagon trains were stalled all 
 along the line of march, communication was at 
 times entirely interrupted between the front and 
 the shore depots, and as an example of the condi- 
 tion of things it may be stated that during the 
 four days preceding the surrender it was only 
 possible to get to the front one light battery of 
 the six brought by General Randolph, while not 
 a single one of the heavy siege guns was taken 
 off the transports at Siboney. 
 
The Fall of Santiago. 119 
 
 The experience which had been that of the 
 First and Tenth Cavalry and Foii^h Riders was 
 repeated in the case of the trooji.s in the main 
 advance. "When they started on the march every 
 man went in full marchinjjr order. That meant 
 rifle, cartridKCR, bayonet, pistol, canteen, 
 poncho, half of a shelter tent, rations and what- 
 ever else the man mij^ht like to burden himself 
 with. The men had worn these traps on the hot 
 but breezy days when they were in Camp Black, 
 on the hotter and broezeless days when they 
 were at Chickamaug:a, in the sweltering pine 
 groves back of Tampa, and in the oven-like 
 plains of our great middle basin, but none of 
 these experiences had fitted them for what they 
 were enduring now. As the regiments moved 
 from the beaches up into the trails, they were as 
 presentable and trim a set of fighting men as one 
 would wish to see. When they had got into po- 
 sition along the line of attack they were as 
 untrim, un-uniformed and bedraggled a lot of 
 fighting men as ever did great deeds. As they 
 struggled up the hillsides and tramped down 
 the slopes the packs shifted and slipped and bore 
 down on them ; and as the sun beat down on the 
 lines of men that were stretched for miles 
 through this terrible country the packs and 
 bundles and impedimenta slid about as though 
 
120 The Fall of Santiago. 
 
 they "Were alivo, and gained in wei?;ht from 
 pounds to tons. In the woods the packs caught 
 in the overhanging underbrush and sent the men 
 stumbling and falling. In the open places the 
 sun was like a furnace and the packs were like 
 lead. At last one man threw his blanket away 
 and then was begun over and carried out that 
 scene of derobement and dispossession which had 
 marked the progress of the dismounted cavalry- 
 men. Blankets were strung along the bushes as 
 though some flock of gigantic sheep had gone 
 through and had left tufts of wool on every 
 bush. After the blankets went cans of meat, 
 then the shelter tents, then the cooking outfit, 
 then coats and underclothes and anything else 
 except his fatigue uniform, his rifle and cart- 
 ridges, for these last two essentials every man 
 kept. 
 
 This was while the sun was blazing, but when 
 the sun set there came another evil out of this 
 strange land. The awful heat passed and with 
 the night air came a penetrating, damp chill that 
 seemed to touch the bone. 
 
 All during the day not even the liveliest imagi- 
 nation could conceive of such heat being followed 
 by any such poetic relief as "the cool of the 
 evening," nor were the evenings cool, but it was 
 at that crisis of the night, the early hours of 
 
Tho Fall of Santiago. 1^1 
 
 dawn, that the searching, penetrating cold came 
 upon the men. So cold indeed was it at this 
 time, partly hy comparison with the hot day and 
 partly as a positive condition, that the men were 
 actually awakened shivering at about two or three 
 o'clock. Tho first consideration then was warmth 
 and dryness, hut when another hour or so had 
 passed and reveille had sounded at four o'clock 
 another change had come and exercise seemed 
 the desideratum in tho fresh of the morning. 
 Another hour or two and as the sun mounted 
 and the pitiless heat grew apace all the men 
 wanted to do was to sit and rest. So the changes 
 went on, from cool humidity to hot humidity, 
 each change sapping away the very vitality of 
 the men. 
 
 A still more serious result to tho men came 
 from their stripping themselves during their 
 march. Not only did they throw away their 
 heavy clothing, hut they rejected their food sup- 
 plies, trusting to lack and the supply trains; or 
 they abandoned their rations for tho simple rea- 
 son that the rations were heavy and they were 
 hot. But the supply trains, as has been inti- 
 mated, were as rare as Sunday railway trains in 
 Vermont, and the situation of the camps soon 
 became a serious one. Officers and men were 
 alike in their plight, but all through the ranks 
 
122 The Fall of Santiago. 
 
 there was no complaining. The ready helping 
 hand of good companionship was there and the 
 clever combining, lending and aiding that went 
 far toward relieving the individual discomforts, 
 and that welded the companionship of the men 
 into those strong bonds of friendship formed in 
 times of trial which never break and live forever. 
 
 One great practical lesson in the economy of 
 the commissariat was learned in this march. 
 "When the men left the landing-places they car- 
 ried cans of preserved food — admirable forms of 
 protected diet under certain conditions, but cans 
 of meat and vegetables are decidedlj' iumpj' and 
 uncomfortable adjuncts to a march through a 
 tropical forest, and, it will be remembered, they 
 were among the first things to be slung into the 
 bush. Between a future meal of bacon and 
 beans and a iirescnt bumping battering ram 
 there was no choice, and the banging thing was 
 discarded. The three essentials of food that the 
 men clung to were coffee, hardtack and bacon — 
 the standard rations — and it was proved again 
 that with these three simples an army could be 
 kept in well-sustained and fighting trim. 
 
 The men on march, too, furnished a practical 
 solution of the water question. Before the inva- 
 sion of Cuba there were many learned discus- 
 sions on water supply, the hygiene of water-drink- 
 
The Fall of Santiago. 123 
 
 ing, clever arrangements for filtration and the 
 establishment of condensing plants. Scientific 
 men, military men and fadful men -wrote and 
 talked about the water of Cuba and the water 
 which our troops were to get while in Cuba. It 
 was to be boiled and filtered and never drunk 
 unless filtered and boiled. In theory, the 
 columns of learned matter which were printed 
 and the hours of clever talk which were given to 
 the subject were admirable. In practice, the 
 men drank the first water they came to. When 
 the Spaniards withdrew from Daiquiri and Sib- 
 oney they partially destroyed the water systems 
 of those two places, but our engineers repaired 
 them and the water taken from those tanks was 
 freely used without boiling or filtering, and with- 
 out any ill effects. In the inland march the men 
 crossed many streams, largo and small, and the 
 men drank of these streams without boiling or 
 filtering and apparently without any ill effects. 
 
 The Mater that did bother them was that which 
 came down in sheets, cold drenching sheets, 
 every time the black clouds swept across the 
 Sierra Cobre. They had heard of the wet season 
 in Cuba, but as their experience of Cuban heat 
 transcended their imagination of it, so was it the ' 
 case in their conception and experience of a rainy 
 afternoon near Santiago. Before the storm 
 
124 The Fall of Santiago. 
 
 came, the Bultry air grew still sultrier. From 
 the trampled, beaten, crushed, tropical under- 
 growth rose sickening odors and heavy miasmatic 
 mists. As the heat grew fiercer, the odors and 
 mists grew heavier. Every life-giving quality of 
 the air seemed to be squeezed out of it, and even 
 the myriad insects and crawling reptiles wore 
 quieted. 
 
 Then, just as the sizzling heat reached a 
 spot where it apparently could go no further 
 and be bearable, a zigzag flash, a thunderclap, 
 and a cataract of ice-cold rain came simulta- 
 neously, and every man was soaked and shiver- 
 ing. If the men were marching, they found 
 themselves suddenly wading through swift run- 
 ning streams of cold muddy water, with what 
 they had on changed from its reek of perspira- 
 tion into cold, wet, clinging garments. If the 
 men were in camp or the trenches, their fires 
 were put out and every ditch became a mud pool. 
 For two or three hours the icy water fell, until 
 all the hillsides were moving with a floating mass 
 of mud and leaves, and the muddy water in the 
 trails had risen from sole to ankle and from ankle 
 to legging top. Then, as suddenly as it had 
 begun, the storm would come to an end, the sun 
 came out hotter than ever; the wet ground 
 steamed ; horrible crawling, flying things filled 
 
The Fall of Santiago. 125 
 
 o" 
 
 the muggy air, and from shivering the men 
 passed to gasping. Yet through it all the mea 
 pressed forward, far less complainingly perhaps, 
 than they would have done had they been at 
 home and a summer shower had spoiled their 
 picnic. 
 
 The flying pests of Cuba the men found bad 
 enough, but it was the consensus of oiiinion 
 that bad as gnats, mosquitoes and beetles were 
 they were far less dreaded than the land crabs, 
 and this because of the repulsiveness of the 
 latter creatures. These hard-shelled, crawling 
 things were everywhere, in the woods and on the 
 plains; crowds of them in the gullies and troops 
 of them on the hilltops. No matter where the 
 men marched or where they halted, there were 
 the squads, regiments and battalions of the land 
 crabs, until the men were sickened at the sight 
 and began to believe that, like sharks following 
 a ship, the land crabs actually followed the 
 army, a species of horrible camp follower. In size 
 the land crabs varied from four to twelve inches 
 across the carapace, its covering area being, of 
 course, increased by legs and claws, the latter 
 qu te formidable implements. 
 
 Ihey are rather gay-colored creatures, their 
 tints ranging from light-green to dark-blue, the 
 blue crab being the most objectionable. They are 
 
126 The Fall of Santiago. 
 
 decidedly gregarious and travel in hosts, and are 
 not inclined to let anything interfere with their 
 line of progression. Individually, the crab walks 
 in a decidedly aggressive attitude. The eye 
 stalks are thrust out, the body tilted sidewise, 
 and the claws thrown upward and outward like 
 sabers. He has the strange fashion of moving 
 forward for a few feet then rapidly scuttling 
 either to the right or to the left, and then as 
 abruptly walking backward. As this decidedly 
 eccentric method of advance seems to animate 
 the whole body of crabs, the aggj-egate result is 
 that this whole body of crabs seems to move 
 along in a wave-like motion. As they move they 
 clash their claws and rattle among themselves, 
 so that when making their way through the brush 
 or grass the sound of their progress is so singu- 
 larly like that of men marching that our pickets 
 constantly mistook the advance of the crabs for 
 the sudden onslaught of the enemj'. As the men 
 marched the crabs marched too in parallel 
 columns; and whe:i the men halted for the night 
 the crabs swarmed over the sleeping men and 
 acted in a generally inquisitive and unpleasant 
 fashion. Many stories were spread by imagina- 
 tive Cubans of the uncanny results of crab-nips, 
 of nocturnal attacks on protruding toes, and of 
 the desperate results that would follow should a 
 
The Fall of Santiago. 127 
 
 crab desire the protriuling toe; of their living in 
 the poisoned shade of witch trees and so on, but 
 in plain truth they are the creeping buzzards of 
 the West Indies, and aid those disagreeable look- 
 ing bird in the great work of scavengering. 
 
 A glance at the map will show that Santiago lies 
 at the head of a landlocked bay, six miles from the 
 sea. Aguadores lies two and a half miles east of 
 the entrance to the harbor and is directly south of 
 Santiago itself, the bay shore curving northward 
 to El Morro. Four miles southeast of Santiago 
 is the ridge of San Juan. Three miles northwest 
 of Santiago is the suburb of El Caney, which is 
 six miles due north of San Juan. A line from 
 El Caney to Aguadores through San Juan would 
 be a fairly straight line in a southwesterly di- 
 rection. Both San Juan and El Caney are 
 perched upon hills, the flat-topped steep-sided 
 formation before alluded to as the distinguishing 
 mark of Las Altares characterizing the scores of 
 hills into which the country is broken to the east 
 of Santiago Bay. On the flat tops of these hills 
 the rich Santiagoans had built themselves broad- 
 eaved country seats, or farmhouses, the altitude of 
 the locality and the general park-like character 
 of the country making these plantation houses 
 charming homes. 
 
 The Spanish engineers were quick to see the 
 
128 The Fall of Santiago. 
 
 strategical importance of these hills as natural 
 defenses and were most ingenious in their elabo- 
 rations upon nature's work. The farmhouses, or 
 country seats, were quickly and effectually trans- 
 formed into forts by filling the spaces between 
 the piazza pillars with ramparts of broken stone 
 or earth bags and by breaking out loopholes in 
 the walls. "Where no farmhouses stood they 
 built a blockhouse of planks and stone, and 
 perched these so promiscuously and generously 
 about that from any commanding elevation one 
 might count a score of these tiny forts. 
 
 As a further elaboration in the system of de- 
 fense the engineers made free use of Weyler's 
 great barbed-wire idea. Barbed-wire fences 
 were found bordering the trails and it was 
 learned that these had been erected for the sim- 
 ple purpose of keeping the Cubans in the right 
 path, any Cuban caught straying in the woods 
 being summarily treated as one who had crossed 
 the deathline; or at least as one who was a 
 poacher on preserves, or a suspicious character. 
 Barbed-wire was strung around the approaches 
 to every blockhouse. The Eough Eiders had 
 found it impeding their way when they charged 
 the hill at La Guasima and the men who fought 
 at San Juan and El Caney found that, like the 
 experience of Cuban heat and Cuban jungle, the 
 
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 3 -5 
 
 ^ en" 
 
 E g g 
 
 E h 
 
The Fall of Santiago. 129 
 
 reality went far ahead of oven the most vivid 
 anticipation. 
 
 The quartermaster-general had been forwarned 
 of the barbed-wire defenses which the American 
 army would meet with in Cuba and had fore- 
 armed the men with nippers, but nippers, like i 
 cans of corned beef, are hard things to carry on 
 a hot march, and were among the first of the im- 
 pedimenta to be dropped. Moreover, when the 
 barbed-wire fences were met with they did not 
 yield to the nippers as easily as had been antici- 
 pated. The nippers had been supplied on the 
 belief that the barbed-wire abatis was composed 
 simply of wire fences of from four to eight feet 
 high, and that a few vigorous nips along the 
 posts would result in loose strands that could 
 easily be thrown back and so open the way to 
 the men. It was found, however, that the 
 barbed-wire defenses were not built on this simple 
 fence plan. Instead of being stretched in regular 
 strands the wire was strung from tree to tree at 
 the most irregular heights possible. Some- 
 times, a strand was found fastened to a stump 
 and running thence to a neighboring tree at such 
 an angle as to carry it ten feet from the ground, 
 from which it slanted down to the next tree to a 
 height of three or four feet from the ground. 
 Six or eight strands of the wire would thus be 
 
130 The Fall of Santiago. 
 
 run irregularly along for miles, and it meant a 
 hunt to discover each individual strand. 
 
 To have done with the barbed-wire question 
 so as not to let it interfere with the plain de- 
 scription of the fight, it may be said here that 
 both at San Juan and El Caney it was frequently 
 found that the only way to discover the presence 
 of a barbed-wire fence was to run against it. At 
 the last slope-down of a steep hill, in the pools 
 and rivers, strung along through the rank grass 
 and surrounding the rifle pits and trenches in a 
 perfect maze — were these abominable wire fences. 
 Nor were they made of single strands, but were 
 often most elaborately put together, being in 
 some cases twisted together like ropes and so 
 matted that it was impossible to get a finger in 
 between the interstices. Before such unusual and 
 artful use of barbed-wire the nippers with which 
 the American soldiers were provided were not 
 much more useful than cheese scoops would be 
 as rock drills. 
 
 To the array of blockhouses and forts and the 
 tangle of barbed-wire, the Spanish engineers had 
 added admirably devised lines of deep but nar- 
 row trenches, running in such lines that the 
 riflemen holding them could easily move from 
 one range to another. Line after line of these 
 trenches and rifle pits was found at every pos- 
 
The Fall of Santiago. 131 
 
 o 
 
 sible point of vantage, the whole system of de- 
 fense exciting the admiration of our engineers. 
 
 Thus it Avas that the army pushed its way into 
 the line of attack, and it was after passing 
 through such trials of advance, climate, country, 
 and pests that it found itself, on the night 
 of June 31, drawn up across the island in a 
 great broken line of three divisions from El 
 Cauey in the interior to Aguadores on the sea. 
 But they had all been natural difficulties to over- 
 come and bear, none of battle, for, save for the 
 brush at La Guasima, the Spanish had made no 
 resistance to the army's advance. The men had 
 practically landed without opposition, and just 
 as it was Shafter's bustling policy to push his 
 men forward until they occupied the outposts of 
 Santiago, so it turned out now to be the Span- 
 iard's equally well-settled plan of campaign to 
 let that advance be made until those outposts were 
 reached, and then to defend them to the death. 
 
132 The Fall of Santiapjo. 
 
 o 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 HOW EL CANEY WAS CARRIED. 
 
 In the future days of criticism much will 
 doubtless be said as to the wisdom, indecision 
 and fortuitous fulfillment of Shafter's plan of 
 campaign. But this book is a record of events 
 and not a discussion of military technicalities. 
 
 Doubtless Shafter expected to do much more 
 in certain directions than he did; and in other 
 directions much more was done than he had an- 
 ticipated would be the case. The capture of El 
 Caney was to be effected, so Shafter thought, in 
 the early hours of the day, after M'hich the 
 troops were to join those before San Juan and the 
 day was to be wound up in a joint attack on and 
 capture of San Juan. As it turned out, El 
 Caney offered a more stubborn resistance than 
 did San Juan, and by the time the troops form- 
 ing the right of the general advance had carried 
 the suburb, San Juan had been stormed and 
 taken. 
 
 It is a fact, too, that Shafter planned the re- 
 
The Fall of Santiaf^o. 133 
 
 duction of an intrenched city without seige guns 
 and mortars, these having been left on the Ori- 
 zaba. But in explanation of this it may bo said 
 that Shafter, in the choice between an assault by 
 unsupported infantry and waiting for the engi- 
 neers to put the road into sufficiently good con- 
 dition to admit of moving the siege batteries to 
 the front, decided that it was better to attack the 
 Spaniards by his army as it stood with such field 
 pieces as could be easily moved forward, rather 
 than to expose his men to climatic effects. As 
 the men stood they were yet full of the strength 
 and vitality they had brought with them, but 
 subject them to a long exposure to summer rains 
 and heat, argued Shafter, and the debilitating 
 powers of these enemies would seriously diminish 
 the fighting quality of his army. 
 
 The disposition of the army, as decided on at 
 a council of war on Juno 29, was as follows : 
 Lawton's Division, the Second, was sent against 
 El Caney; Kent's Division, the First, and 
 Wheeler's Cavalry Division were to proceed 
 against San Juan; Duffield's Brigade was to 
 move on Aguadores. In the order of description, 
 the fight and fortunes of the men at El Caney 
 will be first taken up. The Second Division was 
 constituted as follows : 
 
 First Brigade, General Ludlow commanding, 
 
134 The Fall of Santiago. 
 
 o^ 
 
 Eightb, Twenty-second, and Second Massachu- 
 setts. 
 
 Second Brigade, Colonel Miles commanding 
 Fourth, First, and Twenty-fifth. 
 
 Third Brigade, General Chaffee commanding, 
 Twelfth, Seventh, and Seventeenth. 
 
 Captain Capron's Battery E, First Artillery, 
 was to shell the town and General Garcia, as 
 our ally, held a thousand Cubans under him. 
 Later in the day General Bates' Independent 
 Brigade was attached to Lawton's division. 
 
 General Lawton, following the council of war, 
 not only went over the field carefully on the 
 map, but in company with his three brigade 
 commanders made a reconnaissance on June 30. 
 Lawton reported that he found the Spanish 
 ground much stronger than he had anticipated, 
 and in the absence of heavy artillery he sug- 
 gested that he move his forces at night and so 
 get into position for delivering his blow in the 
 early morning. Lawton failed to get proper 
 support for his suggestion and, with the excep- 
 tion of Chaffee's Brigade, the division slept on its 
 arms. General Chaffee, however, worked his 
 men well to the northward all during June 30, 
 and before the night was over had his men in 
 position, well intrenched to the north and east 
 of El Caney. At early dawn on July 1 the other 
 
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The Fall of Santiago. 135 
 
 troopa of Lawton's Divisiou made their way to 
 the positions previously designated for them to 
 occupy. Ludlow's Brii^ado and Garcia's Cubans 
 moved still further around El Caney until they 
 rested on the west of the village in order to cut 
 off the retreat of the Spaniards when they should 
 be driven out of the town and attempt to retire. 
 Colonel Miles' Brigade took up a position to the 
 east of El Cancy ; Bates, on his arrival, forming 
 to the southeast. 
 
 By this disposition of troops it will he seen the 
 division occupied a broad segment of a circle 
 with El Caney as the center. Dominating El 
 Caney was a stone fort perched on the very apex 
 of a hill, which looked like a minature peak, and 
 at whose base lay the village. The fort was a 
 mediaeval affair, four square, except for a round 
 bastion at each corner. But mediaeval as it 
 was in construction, it was filled with men 
 armed with modern guns and proved a veritable 
 citadel. It was toward this fort that Captain 
 Capron directed the fire of his light battery of 
 four guns. He had planted his battery before 
 sunrise on a bluff about a mile and a half distant 
 fi'om the town, there being a deep swale of roll- 
 ing land between the fort and the battery, the 
 emplacement of the battery having been effected 
 without the enemy's discovering the move. 
 
136 The Fall of Santigao. 
 
 It was yet dark when at five-forty on the morn- 
 ing of July 1 Captain Caprou gave the command 
 "Cannoneers, take your places." The sun was 
 still hidden behind the high peaks of the Sierra 
 Cobre, but there was light enough to see the 
 general surroundings, while with a good glass one 
 could distinguish the Spanish soldiers moving 
 about the trenches which were lined thickly in 
 front of the stone fort, and other men on horseback 
 riding out of the fort. Capron's four pieces, which 
 were of 3.2 caliber, were lined up at some little 
 distance apart, but with their fire all concentra- 
 ted on the fortifications. The range was an- 
 nounced to be from twenty-three hundred and 
 fifty to twenty-four hundred j^ards. Just before 
 the first gun was fired, and while comments were 
 being freely made on the fact that no flag had 
 been run up on the fort and surmises were being 
 hazarded that the town had been evacuated, up 
 popped the sun from behind the Sierra and up 
 went the flag. Capron accepted this apparently 
 as a defi, and immediately gave command to open 
 the battle. He was the father of the young 
 ofiicer who had been killed at the skirmish of La 
 Guasima, and it seemed fitting that he should 
 have the honor of opening the assault on the 
 city. 
 
 The first oi our shells brought no answer, nor 
 
The Fall of Santiago. 137 
 
 did the next two or three, and the belief began 
 to obtain that even if El Caney were not deserted 
 there were no troops in it that would fight. 
 Soon, however, an answer came in the shape of a 
 Spanish shell, which burst on the roof of a small 
 block house at one side of Capron's battery and in 
 which a number of soldiers were standing to get 
 a better view of the artillery duel. It wounded 
 eighteen Americans and thirteen Cubans. 
 This, however, was the best shot of the Spanish 
 gunners for, while their line was moderately 
 good, their range was generally too high. Cap- 
 ron's shooting was excellent, but though many 
 of his shells struck the stone fort and a small 
 block house which stood on another hill back of 
 it, his guns were too light to cause any very 
 great damage. At half-past seven the artillery 
 fire on both sides slackened, but half an hour 
 later Capron began his share of it again, with re- 
 newed energy. General Lawton's infantry being 
 at that time prepared for its advance. 
 
 The same swale which lay between the blufE on 
 which Capron's battery was placed and the hill 
 on which the stone fort was perched extended 
 around the suburbs in moderately well-defined 
 fashion, but broken by rolling land and gullies 
 and small winding streams ; the general elevation 
 
138 The Fall of Santiago. 
 
 of the country beiug lower to the left of the 
 attack thau it was to the right. 
 
 General Chaffee's Brigade began the infantry 
 fight by moving along the extreme right over 
 this higher ground. Then Ludlow's command 
 began pressing across the low country to the left, 
 both brigades moving forward in a series of 
 rushes. The Spanish intrenchments stretched 
 for a considerable distance to the right of the 
 stone fort so that Chaffee's men were exposed to 
 a heavy fire from the earthworks. The Span- 
 iards, too, had thrown out sharpshooters all over 
 the base and slope of the El Caney hill, and as 
 our men dodged from cover to cover in single 
 figures or rushed across a clear space in little 
 groups, the men in the trenches fired by platoon 
 and the sharpshooters picked off the advancing 
 men. 
 
 For a long time, that is for what seemed to 
 them a long time, Chaffee's men, while making 
 their advance, had found themselves shot down 
 and wounded by a fire that came from the left, 
 and they had begun to imagine that they were 
 exposed to Ludlow's fire from down the swale, 
 when they discovered a masked, or rather, half- 
 hidden blockhouse, on one of the spurs of the 
 El Caney hill. It was found, too, to be a place 
 of extreme strength against an infantry attack. 
 
The Fall of Santiago. 139 
 
 being made of double tbiclciiesscs of pine plank- 
 ing with the intramural space filled with a lining 
 of gravel and with earth heaped up around the 
 base to a height of several feet, just above which 
 embankment were narrow slits for the riflemen. 
 Rifle pits also surrounded it, and around the 
 rifle i)its was a maze of barbed wire. 
 
 General Chaffee sent word to Captain Capron of 
 the discovery of the block house and a fieldpiece 
 was moved to a hillock where it could be 
 trained on this Spanish pest hole, but the range 
 was found to be too great, and as Chaffee's men 
 at that time were swarming about the block- 
 house, the cannon was called back. The taking 
 of this blockhouse had occupied so much time 
 that our men to the left had moved well forward 
 to the edge of the swale before Chaffee was free, 
 and the morning had, indeed, well advanced be- 
 fore the division occupied anything like a well- 
 defined attacking line all around El Caney. 
 
 The Seventh was really the first regiment to 
 get into commanding line; then came the Seven- 
 teenth, while, little by little, through groves of 
 royal palms and mango trees, over slippery trails 
 and by short cuts in the jungle; across gulches 
 and through the high Cuban grass the Twelfth, 
 Twenty-second, and Twentj'-fifth got into line, 
 then the Second Massachusetts, and so on, one 
 
110 The Fall of Santiam 
 
 o" 
 
 regiment after another, until the long line of blue- 
 shirted and brown-hatted men was stretched out, 
 and the long-range rifle fight of Mauser against 
 Krag-Jorgensen and Springfield was faivlj' on. 
 
 Foot by foot and rush by rush our men ad- 
 vanced closer and closer, while the fire from the 
 Spanish trenches and fortifications grew heavier 
 and heavier. The men mostly crept along on 
 hands and knees, or wriggled from point to 
 point, but the officers led their commands with- 
 out any attempt at cover, and in this waj' did 
 their share toward contributing to the great 
 mortality among the leaders which characterized 
 the campaign. As the Seventeenth, for instance, 
 moved to close up the gap in the line between it 
 and the Seventh, Lieutenant-Colonel J. H. Has- 
 kell led the way. It was across an open field, 
 and as Haskell stepped out erect into the open 
 space in the first line he fell. Lieutenant Dick- 
 inson ran ahead and was also fatally wounded. 
 It was in the advance across this open country, 
 too, that the men suffered most severely. 
 
 In fact, for the time, it was found impossible 
 to further advance, and there the Seventh and 
 Seventeenth lay under fire for about six hours. 
 They poured their volleys into the Spanish 
 breastworks, but apparently without effect; and, 
 though the Spaniards could be plainly seen, 
 
The Fall of Santiago. 141 
 
 something seemed to be wrong in our range, 
 while the Spaniarcis were perfectly posted on the 
 triangulation of every foot of land. The Spring- 
 field muskets of the Second Massachusetts were 
 even more than ineffectual at this long-distance 
 fight, and made so much smoke that twice they 
 were ordered to cease firing. Close to the 
 Second Massachusetts were lined out the Twelfth 
 and Twenty-fifth regulars, but though by dint of 
 incessantly dropping his shells on the fort Cap- 
 ron had succeeded in knocking out its corner 
 bastions and rendering it comparativelj' innoc- 
 uous, and though the fire of the Krag-Jorgen- 
 sens was concentrated from all along our lines of 
 regulars on the Spanish breastworks in a fierce 
 continuous rattle, still the Spaniards kept up 
 their volleys, while their Mauser bullets actually 
 clipped off the grass tops which fell in showers 
 on our men as though a mower were at work and 
 chopped off twigs and branches in the trees above 
 them as though a pruner were busy there. There 
 seemed no possibility of cleaning out or silencing 
 the trenches except by an advance in which 
 decimation was the prospect, and as the hours 
 wore on El Caney, which was to have been ours 
 by a sharp and brilliant dash made before noon, 
 was as bristling and defiant as ever. It was 
 
142 The Fall of Santiago. 
 
 spoken of as " The Wasp's Nest," and well de- 
 served its name. 
 
 But our men crept doggedly on and, when 
 the long string of wounded made a continuous 
 procession to the rear and the dead about them 
 grew hourly in numbers, they only pressed on 
 the fiercer. What at times changed the fierce- 
 ness of our men to a condition of actual frenzy 
 was when the sharpshooters who had crept 
 through gaps in our lines or had been hidden in 
 the trees before our advance was made, fired for 
 very wantonness upon our wounded and upon 
 the Red Cross men carrying them from the field. 
 To be shot at themselves was what our men ex- 
 pected, because to shoot and to be shot was their 
 business, but when the surgeons and hospital 
 stewards toppled over, the volunteers fairly 
 screeched with rage, while the regulars moved 
 forward another foot and sent another bullet into 
 the trenches. 
 
 Finally the swale was crossed and the attack- 
 ing line was all around El Caney's hillside. 
 Then it w^as seen that the chief source of our 
 slaughter lay in a breastwork which had been run 
 around the very edge of the village, extending 
 from one building to another, with extensions at 
 right angles down the slope of the hill. As 
 has been said, the stone fort stood on a separate 
 
The Fall of Santiago. 143 
 
 O' 
 
 hill with tbo village in a hollo-w beneath, and 
 along the sides of this hill, too, trenches and 
 breastworks had been run out at right angles so 
 that shots from these could almost rake the whole 
 length of our advancing line on the right. 
 
 Slowly our lines crept forward, and upward, 
 regiment after regiment dashing across open 
 spaces and seeking cover in the thickets which 
 dotted the slopes of the suburb. "When the term 
 "regiment after regiment" is used it must not 
 be understood as implying well-preserved regi- 
 mental formation. Under the new condition of 
 things, caused by the long-range rapid-fire 
 weapons, it has been found wisest to scatter the 
 forces so as not to subject troops to great loss by 
 massing them, and at the same time to draw the 
 fire of the enemy in a widely radiated direction. 
 Even had not this new order of things been in 
 existence as a codified plan of action, the nature 
 of the ground over which our troops had to move 
 here would have rendered even a battalion for- 
 mation impossible. The Spaniards, it is repeated, 
 knew the exact location of all the roads and paths 
 and had the range perfectly, while our men as 
 they advanced had to feel their way cautiously 
 over rough and unfamiliar ground. 
 
 Bravely as the dashes were made it was bitter 
 and deadly work for our men and officers. If our 
 
144 The "Fall of Santiago. 
 
 fighting was stubborn the resistance of the Span- 
 iards was determined. Then, as though to add 
 to the exactions of the day, at the very moment 
 when things were at their worst at El Caney, the 
 division commander at San Juan sent over to 
 know if proceedings could not be hurried or 
 abandoned so as to aid in the assault on San 
 Juan. Before giving a reply, the courier from 
 the center was taken down the line from Ludlow, 
 on the extreme left, past Miles' brigade and 
 Bates' independent brigade to Chaffee's position 
 at the extreme right, all four brigades having 
 been drawn into action by the tenacity of the 
 defense. The proposition of virtually calling off 
 his men and abandoning the results of a desperate 
 half-day's work was laid before General Lawton, 
 and he at once decided not to quit. Instead, and 
 as though driven to desperation, word was sent 
 all along the line that the trenches had to be 
 taken and taken at once. And it was done in 
 thirty minutes. 
 
 Captain Haskell, of the Twelfth Infantry, led 
 the assault, his long white beard flying out be- 
 hind him as he rushed forward. Far around to 
 the left General Ludlow, with his white sailor 
 bat stuck on the back of his head, galloped along 
 the front and bade his men follow. His horse 
 was killed under him, but afoot he pushed on, 
 
The Fall of Santiago. 145 
 
 o^ 
 
 gloriously swinging his ridiculous littlo hat in 
 his hand and still shouting to his men to come 
 on. Two leaped out of cover and were shot down. 
 The Twelfth and Twenty-fifth were almost de- 
 prived of their officers in the rush. Lieutenant 
 McCorkle was killed and Captain Lawards and 
 Lieutenant Murdock fell wounded, the disable- 
 ment among the officers being so great that at 
 one time Lieutenant Moss found himself com- 
 manding two companies. The Second Massa- 
 chusetts struggled into the line of assault and 
 Lieutenant Field was instantly killed. Lieuten- 
 ant-Colonel Patterson, of the Twenty-second, was 
 badly wounded and had to be sent to the rear, 
 but there was no wavering among his men. 
 
 At last, after dodging from tree to brush and 
 from brush to gully with Capron's guns banging 
 away and the Spanish Mausers volleying inces- 
 sently, the first of the assaulting lines was actually 
 formed under a group of trees at the foot of the 
 hill. Then with a yell the troops, black and 
 white and brown shot up the hillside, slashed 
 down the wire fences and were in the trenches 
 and had the fort. They were practically open 
 graves and were filled with dead men. 
 
 Between the fort and the village stood a block- 
 house, and as the living Spanish soldiers leaped 
 out from among the dead Spanish soldiers in the 
 
146 The Fall of Santiago. 
 
 trenches and made for the blockhouse, our men 
 ■who were now swarming up over the ridge of the 
 hill shot them as they ran, while those who had 
 taken the fort joined in the slaughter. 
 
 Horrible as were the trenches the fort was as 
 bad. As Captain Haskell, with Captain Clark 
 just behind him, and their men pressing all 
 around them, carried the fort, they found ample 
 and awful evidence of the murderous work done by 
 our fire and of the stubborn holding out against it. 
 Out of the entire garrison but one Spanish officer 
 and four men were alive. Seven lay dead in one 
 small room and forty bodies were scattered along 
 the shooting ways, the walls were shattered, the 
 floors ran blood and the walls were splashed with 
 it. Just as the fort was captured some fleeing 
 Spaniard turned half-round and lodged a ballet 
 in the arm of Mr. James Creelman. He, like 
 Mr. Marshall, was a Journal correspondent, and 
 like Mr. Marshall had esteemed it his duty to be 
 in the thick of the fight. 
 
 With the fort and trenches in our possession 
 the blockhouse was soon taken, and our men were 
 scampering after the Spaniards as the3^ fled down 
 into the village. Of the Spaniards who had tried 
 to seek shelter in the blockhouse as they ran 
 from the trenches but few escaped, so deadly was 
 the fire of our men as they steadied themselves 
 
The Fall of Santiago. 147 
 
 after the rush up the hillside and brought down 
 their ruou with the accuracy born of long target 
 practice; and somehow or other when the block- 
 house was reached nearly all of the Spaniards who 
 had succeeded in getting into that shelter were 
 found dead, victims to the bull's-eye accuracy of 
 our men as they drove their Krag-Jorgensen bul- 
 lets through the loopholes at the Spaniards be- 
 hind them. 
 
 It was a weary set of men who found them- 
 selves victorious at the top of the El Cauoy hill, 
 but there was lots of light and fume in some of 
 them yet, and these rushed into the town in order 
 to bring down or round up a few more of the 
 Spaniards. It was ugly work, for the town or 
 village— and a pretty, quiet-looking village it 
 looked from the top of the hill, with its red-tiled 
 houses and mauresque church— proved to be a 
 death trap. Its streets were festooned with 
 barbed wire, the space between the pillars of the 
 houses had been turned into forts by filling them 
 breast high with stonework and across the roads 
 had been placed barricades of fascines made by 
 filling empty wine barrels with earth. But there 
 was no fight left in the Spaniards now, and from 
 houses and corners the soldiers crawled out in 
 squads and surrendered to the number of one 
 
148 The Fall of Santiago. 
 
 hundred and fifty-eight. So, with the afternoon 
 sun well down was El Cauey won. 
 
 The opposing forces, counting the relative 
 character of the positions, were in number about 
 equal. The Spaniards, with their usual power of 
 minimizing defeat, claimed that the defense of El 
 Cauey was made by six hundred men, but it waa 
 later found that the garrison actually numbered 
 over seventeen hundred men. But whatever 
 their number, they fought to the death and held 
 back Lawton for more than nine awful hours. It 
 was nearly seven in the morning when Captain 
 Capron fired his first gun, and it was five o'clock 
 before El Caney fell. 
 
 The fighting had been hard and hot all day. 
 Though there had not been much steady march- 
 ing, our men had been alert, and on the move all 
 the day under a broiling sun. The water in 
 their canteens was soon consumed, and the hunt 
 for streams and pools was a long and dolorous 
 one. 
 
 The long-killing range of the Mauser rifle and 
 the fact that the entire battlefield was the zone 
 of fire was one of, if not the greatest, trial to the 
 nerves of the men at El Caney. Troopers a mile 
 behind our firing line were killed. As the Fourth 
 Infantry, for instance, was marching to the aid 
 of General Ludlow's Brigade, First Sergeant 
 

 
The Fall of Santiago. 149 
 
 Kirby was shot squarely tLrough the heart al- 
 though the distance from the front was over a 
 mile. The consequence, apart from the trial 
 to the spirit of the men which is the natural out- 
 come of being killed by unseen enemies, was that 
 when night came our dead and dying were 
 scattered over the country for miles. The Span- 
 ish prisoners were set to work burying their own 
 dead while the freshest of our men went back on 
 the quest for their fallen comrades. The rest of 
 the weary troops were gathered up as best they 
 might be, and during the night they got about 
 three hours of fitful napping. At night the 
 Cuban support, which had done little more than 
 scouting duty during the day, moved out to take 
 a further position to the westward of Santiago, 
 and all night long men who had lost their com- 
 mands were straggling into the companionship 
 of their companies, which for the moment meant 
 their home. Capron's men threw themselves 
 beside the guns which they had been working all 
 day. 
 
 Then, notwithstanding all their fierce work on 
 the previous day, when early morning came. 
 General Lawton, leaving a garrison at El Caney, 
 moved across country to help to strengthen 
 Kent's line about San Juan. 
 
 If the American soldiers were impressed with 
 
150 The Fall of Santiago. 
 
 the desperate stubbornness of their Spanish op- 
 ponents, it is also on record that the Spaniards 
 were amazed at the brilliant courage of our 
 roen. One of the few surviving Spanish oflQcers of 
 the battle of El Caney, an aid on General Vara del 
 Key's staff, and present at the death of that officer, 
 has related his impressions of the engagement. 
 The narrative, which is told in the officer's own 
 words, gives the Spanish view — somewhat fan- 
 tastic in certain particulars — of one of the hard- 
 est-fought battles of the war. The narrator says: 
 
 "Brigadier-General Joaquin "Vara del Rey, in 
 command of the brigade of San Luis, composed 
 of three companies of the Twenty-ninth regulars, 
 numbering four hundred and sixtj'-seven men and 
 forty-seven guerrillas, was ordered by General 
 Linares to proceed from San Luis to Santiago, 
 there to reinforce the garrison in the city. 
 
 "We loft San Luis on June 23, marched to El 
 Pozo, and thence to Santiago, where we stayed 
 forty-eight hours, when we were ordered out to 
 El Caney to strengthen the left flank of the 
 Spanish lines. We arrived there on the 28th, in 
 the evening, after an uneventful march. 
 
 "On the afternoon of the 30th we noticed a 
 balloon ascending in the air, where it remained 
 about a quarter of an hour. After its descent we 
 saw the enemy pick up their tents and move their 
 
The Fall of Santiago. 151 
 
 camp, but as the night was falliug we were un- 
 able to locate their new position, although we 
 guessed at it pretty correctly. 
 
 "We hurriedly dag trenches about three feet 
 deep, in which the men fired kneeling. 
 
 "We worked at the trenches and breastworks 
 all through the night, assigned the men to their 
 posts and placed thirty regulars in the fort or 
 blockhouse known as El Paraiso, fearing a sur- 
 prise from the enemy. 
 
 "Our fears proved only too well grounded, for 
 at daybreak the next morning, July 1, the first 
 shell from the enemy's guns fell in the town. 
 
 "The Americans simultaneously opened with 
 four rapid-fire guns and kept up a volcanic fire 
 until three o'clock in the afternoon. We had no 
 artillery with which to reply, and soon realized 
 that we had the fight of our lives on our hands. 
 All the ammunition we had was twelve mule 
 loads of eight cases each. 
 
 "The enemy's fire w^as incessant, and we an- 
 swered with equal rapidity. I have never seen 
 anything to equal the courage and dash of those 
 Americans, who, stripped to the waist, offering 
 their naked breasts to our murderous fire, liter- 
 ally threw themselves on our trenches on the very 
 muzzles of our guns. 
 
 "Our execution must have been terrible. We 
 
152 The Fall of Santiago. 
 
 had the advantage of our position and mowed them 
 down by the hundreds, but they never retreated 
 nor fell back an inch. As one man fell, shot 
 through the heart, another would take his place 
 with grim determination and unflinching devo- 
 tion to duty in every line of his face. 
 
 "Their gallantry was heroic. We wondered at 
 these men, who fought like lions and fell like 
 men courting a wholesale massacre, which could 
 well have been avoided had they only kept up 
 their tiring without storming our trenches. 
 
 "Our stock of ammunition was dwindling fast, 
 we were losing rapidly, and were fighting the 
 battle of despair, the inevitable staring us in the 
 face. General Vara del Rey was standing in the 
 square opposite the church when word was 
 brought him that the last round had been served 
 to the men. This was about three o'clock in 
 the afternoon. 
 
 "He at once gave the order to retreat, crying 
 to his men, 'Salvese quien pueda!' 
 
 "Hardly had he given the order before he fell 
 shot through both legs. One of his aids, Lieu- 
 tenant Joaquin Dominguez, turned to the general 
 as he fell, exclaiming : 'General, what slaughter!' 
 A bullet took the top clean off his skull, killing 
 him on the spot. 
 
 "In the meantime I had secured a stretcher 
 
The Fall of Santiago. 153 
 
 and ordered four men to place the general in it 
 and carr.v him to a place of safety. Bullets were 
 ■whizzing past us and falling like hail all around. 
 It seemed that fate was against us. As thej' 
 placed him in the stretcher General Vara del Key 
 "was shot through the head and killed. 
 
 "All four litter-bearers were shot and Lieuten- 
 ant Antonio Vara del Eey, a brother and aid to 
 the general, was wounded and taken prisoner. 
 Earlier in the day Majors Aguero and Aragon, 
 both on the general's stafU, had also been killed. 
 Beside these, ten other ofScers were shot, and 
 we had two hundred and thirty men killed and 
 wounded. 
 
 "At General Vara del Key's death all took 
 flight, running down the hill and toward the 
 woods and underbrush, in a mad effort to get 
 awaj' with their lives. 
 
 "Toward evening small bands of straggling, 
 worn-out soldiers began to arrive in Santiago, 
 and at half-past eight o'clock that night Colonel 
 Punet came in with one hundred and three men 
 whom he had been able to rally and bring into 
 the city in some sort of order. 
 
 "None of the blockhouses in the surrounding 
 country was engaged that day, but in the early 
 morning a shell from the American lines fell in 
 
154 The Fall of Santiago 
 
 e>^ 
 
 the San Miguel blockhouse, setting it on fire and 
 killing seven men. 
 
 "We estimated the enemy's forces engaged at 
 El Caney on July 1 at three thousand men and 
 their artillery at four rapid-fire guns. 
 
 "It was the hardest fighting I have ever seen 
 or ever care to see. The brilliancy and daring 
 of the American attack was only equaled by the 
 coolness and stubbornness of the Spanish 
 defense. 
 
 "The report that the body of General Vara del 
 Eey had never been recovered is untrue. It was 
 buried by the American troops and his grave was 
 marked with a wooden cross. A decoration 
 found on his breast was unpinned and later 
 handed to General Toral by General Shafter. " 
 
The Fall of Santiago. 155 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. f 
 
 HOW SAN JUAN WAS STORMED AND TAKEN. 
 
 The first part of the battle of San Juan was a 
 muddle; the second part was a glory. 
 
 Between the battles at El Caney and San Juan 
 there were many salient points of similarity. 
 In each case it was a fortified and intrenched hill 
 that had to be attacked by our men ; in each case 
 the battle was opened with an artillery duel; in 
 each case the difficulties of the country prevented 
 the ready deployment of our troops, and in each 
 case the fight was won by a dash of men in which 
 individual grit more than compensated for the 
 absence of brigade tactics or orders. In the 
 case of San Juan, however, all of these factors 
 •were accentuated to an extraordinary degree, 
 
 San Juan hill is a veritable Gibraltar. It 
 sharply rises a bare, rocky, steep-sided ridge 
 from out — to preserve the figure of speech — a sea 
 of meadow land which lies all around its base, ' 
 except on that side which faces Santiago. This 
 meadow land, locally called a 'Paradise, ' is about 
 
156 The Fall of Santiago. 
 
 o^ 
 
 a third of a mile wide and is broken in its expanse 
 of tall entangling grass by these three objects : To 
 the left, supposing one had marched uj) the road 
 from Siboney, a small green knoll; to the right, a 
 shallow pool or lagoon ; between the lagoon and 
 the road, another knoll somewhat higher than 
 that to the left and surmounted by a pretty tiled- 
 roof country seat. Looking at the San Juan 
 hill from across the meadow land it would seem to 
 be a clear rising, unbroken elevation, but a 
 closer inspection of it would show that its surface 
 Avas broken into a number of subsidiary ridges. 
 On the topmost of these ridges was a large broad- 
 eaved hacienda or farmhouse. 
 
 The commanding qualities of this farmhouse 
 the Spanish engineers were quick to perceive, and 
 the dwelling was easily transformed into a strong- 
 hold by piling up broken stone between the pil- 
 lars of the piazza and by cutting loopholes in the 
 walls of the house after the fashion found at El 
 Caney and according to the plan generally de- 
 scribed in the chapter dwelling on the march of 
 the men to the front. Close to the house stood a 
 shod and this also had been transformed into an 
 improvised fort. Along the extreme crest of the 
 hill, facing the meadow laud, the Spanish engi- 
 neers had dug a line of trenches in which the 
 Spanish rifleman might stand and shoot down 
 
^d^ 1 "^...^.ni.^f^ i-:>«4-.rv:Aii 
 
 Copyright by Mail and Express. 
 
 Looking across the meadow land to the San juan Hill — T}:il 
 Rough Riders dashed in their assault — To the lef 
 
dier in the foreground is pointing to the lagoon across which the 
 5en a wind of the road from Siboney to Santiago. 
 
The Fall of Santiago. 157 
 
 any living thing that ventured to cross the 'Para- 
 dise' without any danger to himself. Back of 
 the hacienda was a dip, then a rise, and on the 
 top of this rise had been built one of the charac- 
 teristic Spanish blockhouses, before which had 
 been dug a second series of trenches. Still fur- 
 ther back was another rise, another blockhouse 
 and another series of trenches. Around and in 
 front of the San Juan hacienda were strung 
 entanglements of barbed wire; these were 
 repeated before each of the lines of trenches to 
 the rear, were strung across the face of the hill, 
 stranded in the grass of the valley and stretched 
 through the lagoon. 
 
 Let us now change our position as onlookers 
 and stand on the San Juan hill, facing the road 
 from Siboney. On the other side of the meadow 
 land which swept round tbs base of the hill would 
 be seen a broad exjiause of jungle and thicket 
 which closed in on the grassy level in a well-de- 
 fined boundary far as the eye could reach. To 
 the right the country was hillj', the nearest emi- 
 nence being that of EI Poso, on whose top was 
 the home of a coffee planter. In an air line from 
 the hacienda on the San Juan hill to that on El 
 Poso hill the distance was, one would say, about 
 two miles. To the left the wooded country 
 sloped down to a moderate condition of plane, 
 
168 The Fall of Santiago. 
 
 while iu the distance were the ranges of the 
 Sierra Cobre foothills, among whose mazes our 
 men had marched up from the coast. 
 
 The lagoon was not the only water in the 
 meadow land, for through it swept a bend of the 
 winding San Juan Eiver. This bend of the river 
 could be traced for some distance to the right, 
 would have to be crossed if a man were to walk 
 direct from San Juan to El Poso, and turned into 
 the woods in about what would be the center of 
 the landscape. To the left of where the river 
 thus turned into the woods and just back of the 
 hill and blockhouse, spoken of just now as being 
 one of the three breaks in the meadow land, the 
 main road from the coast emerged. All about the 
 exit point of the road the timber and vegetation 
 grew so thickly that its line in the woods could 
 not be distinguished. Once out in the meadow 
 land the roadway was fairly plain, as it turned 
 around the end of the lagoon and up the side of 
 the San Juan hill, passing back of the hacienda 
 toward Santiago. 
 
 If this description has been written clearly and 
 has been followed closely the reader will see that 
 the San Juan hill stood as a citadel in the path of 
 those who passed to or from Santiago. It had to 
 be taken before any advance could be made on 
 the city. It was the Castilian lion in the path. 
 
Tlie Fall of Santiago. 159 
 
 It will also be seen that in order to take the San 
 Juan hill an advance would have to be made by- 
 regiments strung out along the road in the 
 woods, and that, in order to attack the hill in any- 
 thing like formation, the troops would have to 
 debouch from the wood roadway and then deploy 
 along the meadow laud in the full face of the 
 Spanish fire. It was a task before which a brave 
 man might well recoil, and whose audacity ap- 
 pealed most strongly to the foreign military rep- 
 resentatives present. These seeing what had to 
 be done and what was done, wrote it down as an 
 achievement of personal bravery before which 
 the word impregnable was but an empty sound, 
 and as one of the most astonishing examples of 
 successful mistakes. In a word, it was the as- 
 sault by infantry of a stronghold which should 
 only have been reduced by artillery. 
 
 In meeting the problem thus presented to him, 
 Brigadier-General J. Ford Kent, in command of 
 the First Division, decided, naturally, that there 
 were only two things to do — post what little artil- 
 lery he had on El Poso hill, push his infantry as 
 rapidly as possible up the road through the woods 
 to the meadow land, and under partial cover 
 of the artillery fire and the support of Lawton's 
 men returning from El Caney, throw out his men 
 into open order and carry the hill. This was 
 
160 The Fall of Santiago. 
 
 done, though it was not done just as Kent had 
 planned it should be. The troops in his division 
 were these : 
 
 First Brigade, General Hawkins, Sixteenth and 
 Sixth regulars and Seventy-first N. Y. V. 
 
 Second Brigade, General Pearson, Tenth, 
 Twenty-first and Second, all regulars. 
 
 Third Brigade, General Wikoff, Ninth, 
 Thirteenth and Thirty -fourth, all regulars. 
 
 Beside these he was assisted by General 
 Wheeler's cavalry division, dismounted, consist- 
 ing of the First, Ninth, and Tenth, regulars, and 
 the Bough Eiders. 
 
 The artillery was under charge of Captain 
 Grimes, his battery going into position and pre- 
 paring its gun-pits close to the ruins of the El 
 Poso farmhouse on the night of June 30. 
 
 The morning was still and hot, hot with a trop- 
 ical intensity, the meadow lands below being full 
 of mist while the blue of the sky had a coppery 
 tinge. The little dismantled ranch house with its 
 tiled roof and rusted bell were just below 
 Grimes' battery, and, barring this battery, the 
 v/hole scene was as innocent as a picture. Not a 
 man could be seen at San Juan, and there was not 
 a sound from the right to indicate that up 
 through the woods there was being pushed along 
 winding column of American soldiers. At 
 
The Fall of Santiago. 161 
 
 twenty minutes to seven, Grimes, who had the 
 bespectacled air of a professor, gave the com- 
 mand to lire, and our first shell went flying toward 
 San Juan. Wherever it struck it did no damage 
 and a few others were fired, not so much with 
 a view of demolishing the fortified farmhouse as to 
 find the enemy. He was found after ten shots, 
 his answer coming in the shape of a muffled re- 
 port from the hill and the hissing flight of a five- 
 inch shrapnel shell which burst high in the air. 
 It was a good line fire and the reserves were 
 ordered into cover, but Grimes, like a very fierce 
 professor now, kept his position and his com- 
 mand to "aim" and "fire" went on as steadily aa 
 the ticking of a sedate clock on a farmhouse 
 stairway. So the give and take of the artillery 
 part of the engagement proceeded until suddenly 
 the Spanish fire ceased. But while it had lasted 
 it had been deadly, for three of our artillerymen 
 had been killed; three sergeants and a corporal 
 of the battery had been wounded; in a dip under 
 the hill twelve Cubans had been torn by the 
 shrapnel, and in the wood road there had been 
 terrible havoc. To that wood road it is now time 
 to turn. 
 
 At nightfall of June 30 the three brigades 
 bivouacked along the San Juan road around 
 Sevilla. They were up by daybreak, and about 
 
162 The Fall of Santiafro. 
 
 e>" 
 
 the time when Grimes began his battery fire 
 HawkinSjWith the First Brigade, had reached that 
 part of the road -where it was crossed by the Sau 
 Juan River, about two hundred and fifty yards to 
 the right of El Poso hill. This river rises in the 
 hills northeast of Santiago and follows a devious 
 way under various local names down to the coast 
 where it empties into the sea at Aguadores. 
 
 In its course its affluents cross the road from 
 Siboney to San Juan several times, its course 
 being so belooped in the neighborhood of San 
 Juan that our troops had to ford it twice within 
 a mile. The first of these crossings was that 
 already referred to as being near El Poso, and 
 the second was close up to the edge of the woods, 
 where the forest ended and the meadow land 
 began. Torrential stream as it is, it alwaj'S 
 carries a considerable body of water spread over 
 the large area usually occupied by streams that 
 are accustomed to sudden accessions and diminu- 
 tions, being full of gravel bars and water pits. 
 The river was really the road maker, for the road 
 was drawn across the river wherever a ford was 
 found. 
 
 Hawkins was moving smartly along the road 
 and would have crossed both fords and have been 
 at the debouche of the road into the meadow land 
 had not the division commander (Kent) received 
 
The Fall of Santianro. 163 
 
 Q^ 
 
 orders from headquarters to give right of way to 
 the cavalry which had been posted back of El 
 Poso hill. The iufautry was accordingly halted, 
 and as the cavalry came up the road and also 
 halted at the first ford when it got there, the first 
 of the series of congestions which naarked the 
 gathering of the troops along the road thus took 
 place. When the cavalry crossed the first ford 
 and moved forward, Hawkins, seeing that his 
 men were suffering severely from the Spanish 
 fire, decided to move his men along as quickly 
 as possible, and therefore ordered them to push 
 alongside the cavalry, and this they did, so that 
 Wheeler's division and the head of Hawkins' 
 division were at this time marching in parallel 
 lines, sometimes by file and sometimes two 
 abreast. In such a movement of troops, even 
 were the exigencies of travel alone to be con- 
 sidered, anything like distinct regimental segre- 
 gation would soon have been imperiled; but 
 when to these moving, crossing, mingling lines 
 of men along a wood road were added the 
 deadly and pestiferous attacks of the Spanish 
 riflemen and artillerists, the impossibility of 
 keeping the regiments distinct can readily be 
 understood. 
 
 It had been expected, or at least hoped, that the 
 attentions of Grimes' battery would keep the 
 
164 The Fall of Santiago. 
 
 batteries and trenches at San Juan sufficiently 
 employed to allow our men to advance up the 
 road with only a moderate loss. The contrary 
 was, however, the case and it was due principally 
 to two causes — an experiment on our side and the 
 Spanish sharpshooters. 
 
 If any point has been dwelt on in this history 
 it has been that of attempting to show that the 
 march from the sea to Santiago was for the most 
 part through roads which M'ere so bordered with 
 forest and thickets of underbrush that, except 
 when on an eminence, it was almost impossible 
 to see bej^ond the turn of the road or to form 
 any idea of what danger lurked in the tangles on 
 either side. The consideration of hidden foes and 
 attacks from ambush were always in the hearts of 
 the men, if not always in the plans of the leaders. 
 The same clever tactics and intimate local knowl- 
 edge which were shown by the Spaniards at El 
 Caney, La Guasimaand Guantanamo were shown 
 here with extreme emphasis. The Spaniards who 
 knew that the San Juan hill commanded the way 
 to Santiago knew also every foot of the region 
 roundabout. They were aware of the natural 
 obstacles to advance, the turns of the river and 
 the sharp outlet on to the meadow land and to 
 these natural obstacles had added the active fight- 
 ing one of sharpshooters in the trees. It has been 
 
The Fall of Santiae-o. 165 
 
 to'^ 
 
 noted that this irreguLar branch of the service 
 "was found to be a favorite one with the Spanish 
 strategj' all during the Santiago campaign, but it 
 was usedw^lth unusual freedom around San Juan, 
 
 Every tree from whose branches a turn of the 
 road could be seen or guesse(J at seemed to hold 
 a Spanish sharpshooter. 
 
 As these fellows used smokeless powder it was 
 almost impossible to locate them by casual ob- 
 servation, and they had concealed themselves so 
 cleverly in the foliage that it was sometimes im- 
 possible to discover them by close examination. 
 As the Sixteenth and Sixth regiments of Haw- 
 kins' infantry and the cavalrymen of Wheeler's 
 division were bunched together along the road 
 about the fords, the sharpshooters in the trees 
 reaped an awful harvest. The bullets kept chug- 
 ging into our ranks and the men fell thickly here 
 and there, and all at the hands of an absolutely 
 invisible enemy. 
 
 Men were shot not only in front and flank, 
 but from the rear, the fire being practically all 
 around them. Not only were the losses serious, 
 but the possible demoralization of the men was a 
 still more serious matter, and two companies of 
 colored troopers, whose regimental number need 
 not be given, were at last ordered into the woods 
 as pot hunters. They were told definitely that no • 
 
1G6 The Fall of Santiago. 
 
 prisoners were expected to be brought in ; that 
 every Spaniard found in a tree was to be killed. 
 The order was a plain, swift necessity and the 
 troopers set forward to carry it out with equal 
 plainness and dispatch. They stalked from tree 
 to tree and wherever the ping of a Mauser was 
 heard or the flash of a rifle seen, the colored 
 hunter bagged his game. 
 
 The term "brought down" his game can not be 
 used for in many cases after the sharpshooter in 
 the trees had been shot he did not fall. An in- 
 vestigation of this peculiar result showed that the 
 Spaniard had been tied up in the tree. His 
 Mauser would fall, but the man would not. It 
 was found, too, that the sharpshooters were 
 generally well supplied with provisions, so that 
 the plan of those who tied the men in the trees 
 to have them stay there for some time was clear, 
 although it was never quite clear whether the 
 men had been tied to the branches with their own 
 consent or not. The story obtains, although it 
 has not been proved, that in many cases the men 
 were tied by order of the Spanish officers and so 
 tied that they could not get down even had they 
 wanted to. No particular question was asked of 
 the pot hunters as to their success, but as they 
 were away a long time, as they had much hunting 
 ground to cover and as the fire of the sharpshoot- 
 
^1 ^ 
 
 
 LI ■%< 
 
 
 o " 
 
 " s 
 
The Fall of Santiago. 167 
 
 crs certainly grew markedb^ less, it is to be under- 
 stood that the grim hints which the huntsmen 
 brought back of ghastly fruit left to rot in many, 
 many trees were founded on desperate but neces- 
 sary fact. 
 
 Our experiment was that of a war balloon. It 
 was in charge of the signal corps and was sent up 
 under the care of Lieutenant Maxfiekl. 
 
 The ascension of the balloon resulted in a bene- 
 ficial discovery and a catastrophe. The dis- 
 covery was of a masked road or trail which led 
 oif to the left of the main road near the first ford 
 and by following which a second way of reach- 
 ing the open land could be had. The catastrophe 
 was that the presence of the balloon was imme- 
 diately divined by the Spanish leaders at San 
 Juan to indicate the position of the troops and to 
 show definitely that the Americans had reached 
 the upper part of the road loading to the mead- 
 ow land. Instantly, what shrapnel had been 
 used in reply to Grimes' battery was deflected to 
 the road, and every rifle in the trenches was 
 pointed in the same direction. The sharp- 
 shooters' fire had diminished, it is true, but the 
 hail of the shrapnel and the swarm of Mauser 
 bullets was worse. The killing power of the 
 Spanish rifle at long range was never more dis- 
 tinctively felt than at this time. It was a long- 
 
168 The Fall of Santiago. 
 
 distance fight with a vengeance, but it was one 
 in which our men had to stand and take without 
 being able to deliver a reply. 
 
 The discovery of the branch road was utilized 
 as speedily as possible. The first regiment to be 
 sent up to the left from the front was the Seventy- 
 first New York Volunteers. By sending it up 
 this trail, the regiment was at once separated 
 from the rest of the brigade, the other two regi- 
 ments, the Sixteenth and Sixth, both regulars, it 
 must be remembered, being at that time engaged 
 in squeezing and pushing its way forward as a 
 parallel line to the cavalrymen of Wheeler's bri- 
 gade. Between the volunteer regiment and the 
 regiments of regulars lay the woods and thickets, 
 not yet cleared of sharpshooters. The garrison 
 on San Juan hill either knew from observation, 
 or inferred, that the secondary road was being 
 utilized, for no sooner had the first battalion of 
 the Seventy-first started up the branch road than 
 to the fire of the sharpshooters was added what- 
 ever shrapnel and rifle volleys from the trenches 
 were not given to the men in the main road. 
 ' The report of the division commander when 
 dealing with this part of the day states that no 
 sooner had the First Battalion of the Seventy-first 
 been turned into this byway with orders to 
 march up it and form so as to get into line with 
 
The Fall of Santiago. 1G9 
 
 the other two regiraeuts of the division, than "it 
 was exposed to such a galling fire that it recoiled 
 in confusion on the rear." This is Kent's cold- 
 blooded official statement and there can be no 
 doubt as to its accuracy. Neither can there be 
 any doubt as to the utter absence of anything 
 like an extenuating or explanatory statement in 
 the division commander's report. No refer- 
 ence whatever is made to the fact that by thus 
 ordering the volunteers up a side road, unsup- 
 ported by regulars, they were at once thrown 
 into a position of the most unusually trying 
 character. It was not even a regimental advance, 
 but the stringing out of a battalion along a nar- 
 row road, where every step meant possible death. 
 It is true that this is the sort of thing that all 
 soldiers, whether volunteers or regulars, are ex- 
 pected to encounter; but it is also true tbat this 
 exposure of an unsupported battalion of volun- 
 teers was one of marked severity. Due emphasis 
 maj' be laid upon these conditions, it is believed, 
 without in the faintest advancing anything in 
 the nature of a special plea. 
 
 The First Battalion was ordered to lie down, 
 and it did so, and, by the bye, it was one of the 
 crying faults of the volunteers in the whole San- 
 tiago campaign that they did not lie down as 
 much as they should have done to escape the 
 
170 The Fall of Santiago. 
 
 Spanish fire. The regulars knew that seeking 
 cover did not imply cowardice; the volunteers 
 were afraid that it did. While the First Battalion 
 was lying down, the Second and Third came 
 steadily along and moved up the trail. 
 
 At twenty minutes past twelve the Third Bri- 
 gade, Wickoff's, reached the forks, and was sent 
 forward by the left road, up which it marched, 
 pushing forward past the volunteers and so to 
 the edge of the woods. No sooner had the Third 
 Brigade been thus disposed of than up came the 
 Second Brigade (Pearson's), forming the rear. 
 This brigade was split at the forks, the Tenth 
 and Second Eegiments being sent up the trail to 
 the left and the Twenty-first along the main road. 
 In each case the different regiments were in- 
 structed to form with their fellow regiments of 
 the same brigade when possible. But by thus 
 splitting the forces it came about that only in 
 the case of the Second was anything like a bri- 
 gade formation preserved. The troops stood in 
 this wise: 
 
 UP THE BRANCH KOAD. UP THE MAIN ROAD. 
 
 First Brigade: Wheeler's Cavalry: 
 
 Seventy-first New York Vol. First. 
 
 Third Brigade: Tenth. 
 
 Ninth. Ninth. 
 
 Thirteenth. Rougli Riders. 
 
 Twenty -fourth. First Brigade: 
 Second Brigade: Sixteenth. 
 
 Second. Sixth. 
 
 Tenth. Second Brigade: 
 
 Twenty-first. 
 
The Fall of Santiago. 171 
 
 "When the Third Brigade reached the edge of 
 the wood it found itself at a ford of the San 
 Juan River, -which in its erratic course had turned 
 that way. Wickoff saw that the only way to 
 save his men from annhiliation in crossing the 
 stream and gaining the open was to deploy and 
 rush for it. Word was given to this effect, was 
 passed along the line, and with a cheer everybody 
 along the road started in on one of those dashing 
 rushes which characterized the day. Through the 
 jungle, across the stream knee-high, waist-high, 
 and up and over its banks — slippery with the mud 
 of the bottom lands and tangled with barbed- 
 •^ire — across the shingle beds into which the 
 feet slipped, the men rushed. Even the division 
 commander acknowledges that in this wild dash 
 for the open there was nothing approaching bri- 
 gade formation. By companies, here and there, 
 battalions now and then, and by regiments rarely, 
 the Third Brigade, gathering up as it went the 
 foremost of the Seventy-first New Yorkers, with 
 Captain Goldsborough of Company M acting as 
 their impromtu major, reached the open and 
 actually formed into something like a well-defined 
 line of assault. But it was bloody work. 
 
 Wickoff was killed as he ran ahead, keeping 
 the men together. Lieutenant-Colonel Worth of 
 the Thirteenth took his place, and went down 
 
172 The Fall of Santiago. 
 
 severely wounded. Lieutenant-Colonel Liscum of 
 the Twenty-fourth, upon whom the brigade com- 
 mand then descended, took up the lead with a 
 cheer which had scarcely begun when he too fell, 
 and as the brigade swept up to the hill it was 
 under charge of Lieutenant-Colonel E. P. Ewers 
 of the Ninth. Those who from the woods 
 could see the burst of the Third Brigade and its 
 lightning formation and dash across the open 
 have said that it was one of the most brilliant 
 and stirring things ever seen on a battlefield. 
 It only lasted ten minutes, but in those ten 
 minutes the brigade command had thrice de- 
 scended on the field, while the brigade men lay 
 scattered in pitiful numbers all over the Paradise. 
 If the jam and congestion of men in the main 
 road had been confusing while the two regiments 
 of the First Brigade and Wheeler's dismounted 
 cavalrymen were struggling for the right of way, 
 it can be imagined what the congestion and jam 
 were like when the regiments of the other bri- 
 gades were added to the mass of men. The de- 
 flection of part of the troops into the trail on the 
 left was what might literally be called an avenue of 
 relief, but, even with this, the two roads for miles 
 back from the open were full of crowded columns 
 of men all in more or less disorder, all exposed 
 to a deadly fire which lasted all through the 
 
The Fall of Santiago, 173 
 
 moruing hours and all anxiously waiting for a 
 chance to get out and kill something they could 
 see or bo killed by a visible enemy. To the lay- 
 man the simple solution of the whole matter 
 would, perhaps, seem a steady march along the 
 roads and a quick burnt into the open of each 
 company as it arrived at the meadow land, the 
 rapid deploy of those who emerged and the con- 
 tinuous accession to the deploy line of men from 
 behind. In such a clearance of the congestion 
 many would surelj' fall, but some would surely 
 escape, enough, anyway, to form a good line of 
 advance. But to the military leaders no such 
 simple method of relief was found practicable, 
 or, at any rate, it was not put into practice. 
 Indeed, to the men in the woods, it looked as 
 though the military leaders did not exactly know 
 what to do, and in the same cold-blooded spirit 
 of telling facts which characterizes Kent's report, 
 it must be stated that on a quiet after considera- 
 tion of the battle the surviving brigade and regi- 
 mental commanders were of the very decided, if 
 altogether unofficial, opinion that the day had 
 been remarkable for its utter absence of either 
 brigade or regimental orders received and carried 
 out. 
 
 Orders were issued which, if strictly obeyed, 
 would have meant that some regiments would 
 
174 The Fall of Santiao-o. 
 
 &" 
 
 be Btill waiting in the San Juan road; and 
 in other cases contradiction traveled so quickly 
 on the heels of orders, and reaffirmations so 
 quickly on the heels of contradictions, that some- 
 times the order of the dispatches was mixed and 
 a regimental commander was dutifully undoing 
 that which he was expected to be performing. 
 
 But of it all the Third Brigade, as has been 
 said, did burst out into the open and, as it 
 did so, the two regiments of Hawkins' brigade 
 (the Sixteenth and Sixth) also broke from fhe 
 mass of men at the head of the main road. 
 
 The Third and First brigades were out, and 
 those who stood on the top of El Poso hill and 
 saw this burst of men said that the efflux of 
 scampering, dodging, cheering men was like that 
 of the frothy spume of champagne from two 
 bottle necks. Almost at the same time, for chro- 
 nological accuracy in such details as minutes 
 seemed absolutely impossible in the face of the 
 general and undefined advance, the cavalry 
 division leaped free of the woods and made a 
 dash for the hillock which has been described as 
 occupying a point in the meadow land between 
 the lagoon and the woods. With them, or after 
 them, or close on the heels of Hawkins' regi- 
 ments ran the Twenty-first regiment of Pearson's 
 Second Brigade, while far to the left his other 
 
The Fall of Santiago. 1T5 
 
 two regiments, the Tenth and Second, which were 
 to the rear of Wickoff's brigade in the branch or 
 path also broke cover and swept out behind the 
 grassy knoll which has been described as occu- 
 pying a point in the airline between El Poso and 
 San Juan hills. These two regiments furnished 
 a notable exception to the general method of 
 advance, and did actually move forward in com- 
 pany to the rear of the knoll. There they de- 
 ployed and advanced in a line over its crest and 
 into the meadow, which, now as far as the eye 
 could reach, was alive with blue-shirted soldiers 
 with their faces all turned one way — to the San 
 Juan hill. 
 
 What does it matter who got there first? The 
 division commander confesses his inability to 
 say, and the one incontrovertible fact is that the 
 Sixth and the Sixteenth on the right, the Ninth, 
 Thirteenth and Twenty-fourth, and the fighting 
 battalions of the Seventy-first New York Volun- 
 teers all got to the top of the hill about the same 
 time, and that the leading men were there at 
 some minute between 1:25 and 1 :30 p. m. A 
 simple statement this, made as the result of a 
 dissection of varying reports in the search for 
 truths, but covering a collection of stirring deeds 
 such as will be to the history of the American 
 soldier what that of Tel-el-Kebir is to the British. 
 
1T6 The Fall of Santiago 
 
 o" 
 
 The battle of San Juan has been called a battle 
 of squads; it was really a battle of men. It was 
 not the esprit du corps, though that existed, 
 which carried the day ; it was the esprit 
 d'homme. Out where the Sixth and Sixteenth 
 were plunging forward, had the day depended on 
 orders, it would have been a disaster instead of 
 a victory. Captain Kenon, Company E, of the 
 Sixth, and Captain Byrnes, Company F, had got 
 out and were lining forward when the two met a 
 company of the Sixteenth, merged and went on 
 again, without any company division. Kenon 
 and the men who followed him, went up the hill 
 in a flanking way, then turned at right angles to 
 face the first blockhouse. When he reached the 
 top and turned he was alone. His men had 
 taken another line of attack, and when the regi- 
 ment behind him came piling up it proved to be 
 Byrnes' men, or, at least, a much-mixed lot who 
 were following Byrnes. Kenon and Byrnes 
 shook hands, mutually congratulating each other 
 on being the first to reach the summit, when 
 there was a cheer to the left, and Lieutenant Ord 
 was seen leaping across the trenches with a file 
 of men behind him. Ord was a staff officer, but 
 had joined the firing line, and in the climb up 
 the hill had gathered a promiscuous lot of 
 soldiers whose regimental numbers included 
 almost everything on the field. 
 
The Fall of Santiao:o. 177 
 
 o" 
 
 "When the Sixth and Sixteenth started from 
 the woods Hawkins placed himself between the 
 two regiments and cheered his men along, and 
 when he panted to the top and was cheered by 
 his men, there were as many of Wickoff's 
 troopers about him as of the regiments he had led. 
 
 Even in the assault on the trenches, and the 
 confusion which followed it, the men on the hill 
 could hear the yell of the Rough Riders and 
 colored troopers as they, too, rushed down the 
 slope of the hill on which stood the blockhouse, 
 which they had assaulted and carried, and trot- 
 ted and pulled themselves up the San Juan hill to 
 be in at the death. General Wheeler, sick and al- 
 most sunstruck though he was, had stuck to his 
 division in the "Bloody Angle" and struggled for- 
 ward to watch the charge of his horsemen on foot. 
 He saw the lightning fall of the blockhouse, and as 
 he saw it the memorable but most forgivable 
 mistaken cry escaped him of "There go the 
 Yankees. Give it to 'em, boys!" Between the 
 blockhouse hill and the main San Juan hill lay 
 the lagoon, and through it the Rough Riders 
 dashed. Colonel Roosevelt splashing and cheer- 
 ing at the head of his men. 
 
 This is what our men had been doing. Mean- 
 while, as the charge was made across the open 
 and up the hill, the Spaniards turned their vol- 
 
178 The Fall of Santiago. 
 
 leys on the advancing troops. It was a wither- 
 ing fire before which the men reeled and dropped 
 in their tracks. As though by a common 
 impulse, our men refrained from firing until 
 they were close upon the trenches, and indeed 
 until they could see the men individualb' in the 
 rifle-pits. Blue-shirted men lay in hundreds 
 over the thick grass, in the shallow waters of the 
 pool, and on the slopes of the hill — slopes so 
 steep that in many cases the men had to pull 
 themselves up by rocks and bushes. At last they 
 could see the enemy, see the whites of their eyes, 
 and then steadying themselves, the whole army 
 pumped American bullets into the Spanish line. 
 The first line of trenches was a shambles, and 
 throwing out the dead Spaniards, oiar men dropped 
 into the horrible slime and directed their fire on 
 the enemy, now running pellmell to the second 
 line of defense. 
 
 But, though the first line was gained, and the 
 second was commanded by our position in the 
 first line of trenches, the Spaniards as yet showed 
 no disposition to acknowledge the day as lost. 
 A hurried council of war was called in a break 
 beneath the brow of the hill, and it was decided 
 to rush and carry the other trenches and block- 
 houses. After the work of the morning this was 
 comparatively easy, that is, it was a plain case of 
 
From photograph by J. C. Hemment. 
 
 The Seventy-first N. V. Volunteers as they were turned into the by-path off the main road 
 it was while the Seventy-first were marching up the by-path that they 
 
Copyright, 1898, by W. B. Hearst. 
 tn Juan. The two regular regiments of" the Brigade were up the road to the right, and 
 met by what the Division Commander styled "a withering hre.'' 
 
The Fall of Santiago. 179 
 
 fight. The charge was led by Eoosevelt at the 
 head of the Rough Eiders and the Twenty -fourth 
 Colored, and tired as the men were, they formed 
 behind the hacienda and swept on irresistiblj'. 
 This was fighting work they could do and feel 
 moderately at home in. It was not the lurking 
 hidden death which they had been facing from 
 eight until noon. There were the trenches and 
 the blockhouses on the rolling lands before them. 
 By rush and volley they went and by volleys 
 from the trenches they were met. It was awful 
 work, but there was the fever of fight in the 
 men, and by 3 :50 p. m. the last intrenchment 
 was carried and the Spaniards had retired to the 
 outworks of Santiago. 
 
 The men who carried the trenches remarked 
 on the great number of Spanish dead, and it 
 was the general opinion that out of those 
 whose volleys made such frightful holes in the 
 advancing Americans, from seventy to eighty -five 
 per cent, went down in that terrible hail of 
 bullets sent in by our men when they had a fair 
 chance to show their deadly accuracy of aim. The 
 chief loss was the disabling of General Linares, 
 who was shot by Sergeant McKinnery, of Com- 
 pany D, Ninth Infantry, at a thousand yards. 
 Linares immediately relinquished the command 
 to General Toral, nor did he again assume it 
 pending the campaign. 
 
180 
 
 The Fall of Santiairo. 
 
 It was a glorious victoiT, but clearly bought. 
 Every regiment had lost and lost heavily. 
 Twelve officers and seventj'-seven men killed, 
 and thirt3'-two officers and four hundred and 
 sixty-three men wounded made up the casualties 
 to the First Division, the official report in detail 
 being as follows : 
 
 REPORT OF KILLED, WOUNDED AND MISSING, FIRST DIVI- 
 SION, FIFTH ARMY CORPS, JULY 1, 1898. 
 
 Organization. 
 
 First Brigade: 
 
 Sixteenth Infantry 
 
 Sixth lufantrv 
 
 Seventy-first N. Y. Vol. Infantry. 
 
 Totals. 
 
 Second Brigade: 
 
 Tenth Infantry 
 
 Twenty-first Infantry 
 
 Second Infantry 
 
 Totals. 
 
 Third Brigade: 
 
 Brigade Commander 
 
 Ninth Infant'-y 
 
 Thirteenth Infantry 
 
 Twenty-fourth Infantry. . 
 
 Totals.- 
 
 Killed. 
 
 Grand totals 13 
 
 38 
 
 10 
 
 Wounded. 
 
 177 
 403 
 
The Fall of Santiago. 181 
 
 It was at 4 :-15 p. m. that the firing died away 
 ■ — a firing which had been terrific, and so the 
 foreign expert observers said, unexampled in its 
 fierceness and intensity' — and (luiet fell on the 
 valley, a quiet so sudden and startling that it 
 seemed as though the machinery of the universe 
 had stopped running. It was a case of actual 
 exhaustion on both sides, and though it was 
 known afterward that had the Americans pursued 
 their advantage they could have followed the 
 Spaniards clear into Santiago and have taken it 
 almost without a struggle, we could not have 
 done so even if it had re<iuired no more exertion 
 than driving into the city a flock of sheep. 
 The men dropped where they stood, and all they 
 knew or cared for was that they had won the bat- 
 tle of San Juan, and that the impregnable Gibral- 
 tar of the Santiago highroad was theirs. 
 
 Though the San Juan hill was taken Santiago 
 was by no means ours. After trench-digging 
 and the early morning visit of the commissariat 
 it was hoped that a few hours' sleep might be 
 granted our men, but such was not the Spanish 
 idea. At five o'clock on Saturday morning the 
 enemy made a desperate effort to recover its lost 
 position. Again and again the hill was assaulted 
 and again and again the Spanish soldiers were 
 driven back — driven back too, with awful losses 
 
182 The Fall of Santiago. 
 
 for now the conditions were reversed. Our 
 
 men were intrenched and the Spaniards were at- 
 tacking an intrenched position. The dynamite 
 gun of the Rough Riders did telling work 
 throughout the day, throwing shells into Santiago 
 itself, and a battery of Hotchkiss guns was set 
 up near the hacienda and cut swathes out of the 
 enemy's ranks. 
 
 All day long the assaults of varying determina- 
 tion were made and night, that is, the night of 
 Saturday, July 2, brought a general sortie. It was 
 at 9 :30 that the firing of the pickets brought the 
 wearied men once more to their feet. The Span- 
 iards swarmed through the outer lines and pushed 
 their way desperately on until in many cases they 
 reached within a hundred yards of our lines. 
 But in the trenches now stood men whose fire 
 was cool and deadly, the sortie was completely 
 repulsed and the Spaniard fell back to his third 
 line which ph^ced him close under the walls of 
 Santiago. Next morning, however, the Spaniards 
 were again at it, but in a desultory long-distance 
 firing which lasted until noon, when, to the sur- 
 prise of those who did not know of the curious 
 things that were happening at headquarters, a 
 flag of truce was displayed and the order to cease 
 firing ran along the lines. 
 
 Owing to the reversal of positions just spoken 
 
The Fall of Santiairo. 
 
 183 
 
 of, our losses at San Juau in the second and 
 third day 's iightiug were trifling compared to 
 what they had been on the first. Nine men 
 killed, four officers and ninety men wounded, 
 nnule up the casualties of July 2; while in the 
 third day's fighting only one man was killed and 
 eight were wounded. 
 
 In the three days' fighting the losses were as 
 follows : 
 
 
 At San Juan. 
 
 At El Caney. 
 
 Total. 
 
 
 OflBcers. 
 
 Men. 
 
 Officers. 
 
 Men. 
 
 Officers. 
 
 Men. 
 
 Killed 
 
 12 
 36 
 
 87 
 561 
 62 
 
 11 
 44 
 
 121 
 
 642 
 
 19 
 
 23 
 
 80 
 
 208 
 
 
 1,203 
 81 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 48 
 
 710 
 
 55 
 
 782 
 
 103 
 
 1,492 
 
 While it was and has been difficult to secure 
 anything like a definite statement of the Spanish 
 casualties, the following figures are substantially 
 correct. At El Caney the killed, wounded and 
 prisoners were found in round numbers to have 
 been two thousand. At San Juan they reached 
 three thousand, a total of killed, wounded and 
 prisoners of five thousand. 
 
 It was said just now that the display of the 
 white flag was a surprise to those who saw it and 
 
18i The Fall of Santiago. 
 
 who were not acquaiuted with the strange things 
 that had happened at headquarters. This is the 
 record: General Shafter, who, during the triple 
 fight of July 1, had been lying sick at Sevilla, 
 was in a much worse physical condition on July 
 2, while to his bodily ailments was added much 
 mental perturbation. From the reports brought 
 him from the front he learned of El Caney's 
 stubborn resistance, of the slaughter at San Juan, 
 of the Spaniard's persistent fighting at this latter 
 place and of the small things done at Aguadores 
 by Brigadier-General Duffield. With the Thirt^-- 
 third Michigan Volunteers, a battalion of the 
 Thirty-fourth Michigan and about two thousand 
 Cubans this officer, it will be remembered, was 
 to advance on the little fortified toAvn at the 
 mouth of the San Juan Kiver. Aguadores, Vv'ith 
 its four thousand Spanish troops, was to be 
 shelled by the New York and Suwanee while 
 Duffield engaged them in a shore attack or cut 
 off their escape to Santiago. But when Duffield 
 neared Aguadores he found that the Spaniards 
 had destroyed the railroad trestle across the San 
 Juan, the Michigan men being obliged to halt on 
 this side of a ravine, and that the bombardment by 
 the flagship and her consort had done no material 
 damage to the fort. When Duffield 's men ap- 
 peared, the fort opened fire and with its first 
 
The Fall of Santiago. 185 
 
 three shells killed twenty-tbree Cubans and two 
 men of the Thirty-third. Duffield replied with 
 a few volleys, but seeing the hopelessness of his 
 position retired along tbe Siboney road. 
 
 Learning of these things Shafter, on Saturday, 
 called a council of war, during which the proposi- 
 tion was advanced whether it would not be better 
 to retire the American army to the high lands 
 above Siboney pending the arrival and emplace- 
 ment of heavy siege guns. Generals Kent and 
 Sumner, who had arrived from San Juan, favored 
 a withdrawal, but General Wheeler said bluntly 
 that he proposed to stay where he was and in this 
 stand he was backed by Generals Lawton and 
 Bates, who came in from El Caney. Shafter's 
 depression was so great, however, that he did 
 not abandon his idea of retiring but determined, 
 with a full appreciation of the gravity of such a 
 movement, that the American lines should mean- 
 while be thrown as far north as possible. And, 
 with a policy of contingencies that was most re- 
 markable and that produced still more remark- 
 able results, he decided to demand the surrender 
 of Santiago. In this remarkable determination 
 General Shafter anticipated that, under cover of 
 the negotiations that would certainly follow such 
 a demand, he might be able to retire with safety 
 and dignity and it may be, although it is not on 
 
186 The Fall of Santiago. 
 
 record, that the wild hope may have been enter- 
 tained that the commander of the Santiago forces 
 would be surprised by such a demand into actual 
 surrender. It is on record, however, that the 
 government at Washington received on Sunday, 
 July 3, two dispatches from Shafter which by 
 turns so quickly depressed and elated it and 
 which for a time seemed so inexplicable in their 
 contradiction that they still occupy a prominent 
 place in the documentary wonders of the cam- 
 paign. The first dispatch was as follows : 
 
 "Playa del Este, July 3. To Secretary of 
 "War, Washington. Camp near Sevilla, Cuba, 
 July 3. We have the town well invested on the 
 north and east, but with a very thin line. Upon 
 approaching it we find it of such a character and 
 the defenses so strong it will be impossible to 
 carry it by storm with my present force. 
 
 "bur losses up to date will aggregate a thou- 
 sand, but the list has not yet been made. There 
 is but little sickness outside of exhaustion from 
 intense heat and exertion of the battle of the day 
 before yesterday, and the almost constant fire 
 which is kept up on the trenches. 
 
 "Shafter, Major-General." 
 
 The effect of this dispatch upon the govern- 
 ment was as depressing as was its tone. A gen- 
 eral council of war was called for and held at noon 
 in the office of the Secretary of War, at which it 
 
The Fall of Santiago. 187 
 
 was decided to rush all possible reinforcements 
 to SLafter, to send him a message of gratitude 
 and thanks; %vhilo the conclusion was reached 
 that the results before Santiago were those of a 
 drawn battle and the expectation was entertained 
 that the next news from Sbafter would bo that 
 he had abandoned El Canej' and the San Juan 
 plateau and was preparing to move his troops to 
 the Siboney highlands for rest and preparation. 
 Alger sent a dispatch of comfort to the effect 
 that the President directed him to forward "the 
 gratitude and thanks of the nation for the bril- 
 liant and effective work" of the Santiago army 
 on July 1. General Miles sent his congratula- 
 tions and the notice that ho expected to be with 
 him (Shafter) "within one week with strong 
 reinforcements. " 
 
 Following close on the receipt of Shafter's pes- 
 simistic report and the dispatch of the govern- 
 ment's message of comfort came, like a sudden 
 sun ray through a rift in a dark cloud, this 
 remarkable dispatch : 
 
 "Playa del Este, July 3. To Secretary of War, 
 Washington. Camp near Sevilla, Cuba, July 3. 
 I sent a demand for the immediate surrender of 
 Santiago, threatening to bombard the city. I 
 believe the place will be surrendered. The fol- 
 lowing is my demand for the surrender of San- 
 tiago: 
 
188 The Fall of Santiago. 
 
 " 'Commanding General Spanish forces, San- 
 tiago de Cuba, July 3, 
 
 " 'I shall be obliged, unless you surrender, to 
 shell Santiago de Cuba. Please inform the citi- 
 zens of foreign countries and all women and 
 children that they should leave the city before 
 ten o'clock to-morrow morning. ' 
 
 "Very respectfully, Shafter, 
 
 "Major-General Commanding," 
 
 But Washington had not yet don3 with the 
 surprises to which Shafter was to treat it on the 
 momentous Sunday, July 3. Prior to the report 
 from the General of his demand for the surrender 
 of Santiago and his announcement that he be- 
 lieved that the command would be complied with, 
 the government had received an intimation from 
 Colonel Allen, in command of the cable station 
 at Play a del Este, that the Spanish fleet "had 
 been destroyed and was burning on the beach." 
 What "beach" or how "destroyed" this first 
 and meager information of a great event did not 
 say. Then came this dispatch from Shafter: 
 
 "Headquarters Fifth Army Corps, 
 
 "Cttba, July 3. 
 "The Spanish fleet left the harbor this morn- 
 ing and is reported practically destroyed. I de- 
 manded the surrender of the city at ten o'clock 
 to-day. At this hour, four-tbirty p.m. no reply 
 has been received. Perfect quiet along the Hue. 
 
The Fall of Santiago. 189 
 
 The situation has hern precarious on account of 
 the difficulties of sujiplyins the command with 
 food and the tremendous fighting? caiiabilities 
 shown by the enemy, -who has almost an impreg- 
 nable position. 
 
 "Shatter, Commanding." 
 
 The American Army was ready to fall back; 
 the demand for Santiago's surrender had been 
 made and would be complied with; the Spanish 
 fleet had been destroyed; and the demand for 
 the city's surrender was still being considered — ■ 
 it was a combination of contradictory and sensa- 
 tional news which left the Government still guess- 
 ing and which set the public agape. 
 
 From this confusion, and the presentation of 
 its existence is necessary in a story which aims 
 at accurately presenting the condition of things 
 both at home and abroad, it is pleasant to turn 
 to the facts of events. 
 
190 • The Fall of Santiago. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 HOW SCHLEY DESTROYED CERVEBA's FLEET. 
 
 Except in a casual way it lias not been found 
 necessary, in the progress of this history, to 
 refer to Cervera's fleet from the moment of its 
 discovery inside Santiago Harbor by Schley. 
 The fleet was there, ahut up in the land-locked 
 harbor; the subject of forcing the passage, brav- 
 ing the mines and risking the fires of the bat- 
 teries and engaging the fleet had, as has been 
 told, formed the subject of conversation and 
 plan between Admiral Sampson and his comman- 
 ders; and the Merrimac, as has also been told, 
 v/as sunk partly athwart the channel by Hobson 
 — but outside of these facts and references Cer- 
 vera's fleet has been a passive factor in this 
 story. 
 
 It will be remembered that when the great 
 running Admiral got behind the shelter of 
 El Morro and La Socapa his seclusion was en- 
 titled by the Spanish authorities "a great tact- 
 ical victory," while our authorities were equally 
 
The Fall of Santiago. 191 
 
 precise in esteemiug the process of bottling it up 
 as the settlement of an undefined danger. But 
 housed as it was in Santiago Harbor and par- 
 tially locked though the door might be.Cerverva's 
 fleet was still in existence and sometime or other 
 would have to bo met and accounted for. As to 
 how that meeting would occur there were many 
 surmises, but not even the deftest romancer in 
 the fleet ever spun a yarn so full of bright and 
 glowing threads as that in which Cervera was 
 moored, wound up and ended. The spectacular 
 element, of whose profusion in this campaign I 
 have before remarked, was eminently, distin- 
 guishingly present in the last act of Cervera's ap- 
 pearance in the role of naval commander. 
 
 Passive though the Spanish fleet may have 
 seemed to be in its imprisonment, the time had 
 been by no means one of inaction to the Spani- 
 ards. To the contrary, it had been one in which 
 movement and anxiety had had equal parts. 
 
 The story of Cervera's imprisonment, and 
 attempt to escape as told by the Spaniards them- 
 selves is rather a pitiful one. Those who tell it 
 are Captain Eulate of the Viscaya, Captain Con- 
 treres of the Colon, Cariuz the impressed and 
 official pilot of the Spanish fleet, and, lastly, that 
 log of the Colon out of which we have already 
 gathered the story of Cervera's flitting from port 
 
192 The Fall of Santiago. 
 
 O" 
 
 to port. It is a long story as well as a pitiful 
 one, but some of it must be told here. 
 
 The time of feasting and frolic which followed 
 the entrance of Cervera's fleet into Santiago Har- 
 bor on May 19th lasted until the appearance on 
 the outside of Schley's grim-looking warships. 
 Then the rollicking was cut short, shore-leave cut 
 off and feverish activity took their place. Just 
 as our naval commanders were busy in devising 
 plans to keep Cervera from coming out, so Cervera 
 was hard at work devising plans to keep Schley 
 and Sampson from coming in. Four six-inch 
 guns were taken out of the Reina Mercedes, two 
 of them placed in La Socapa battery so as to 
 enfilade the neck of the harbor and two mounted 
 in a shore battery opposite Cay Smith ; the elec- 
 tric mines in the channels were reinforced with a 
 number of contact mines; a great boom of logs 
 and swinging rope nooses was laid clear across 
 the bay between the entrance and the fleet, and 
 four rapid-fire six-pounders were removed from 
 the flagship and placed in shore earthworks op- 
 posite the narrowest part of the entrance. 
 When all of these works of protection had been 
 done, and their accomplishment occupied until 
 May 31, both Cervera and Linares held that San- 
 tiago was impregnable to a sea attack and indeed 
 it seemed a peculiar fancy of the Spanish com- 
 
The Fall of Santiago. 193 
 
 mandera that they wore always contriving and 
 constructing "impregnable" positions, with the 
 equally nugatory result that the "impregnable 
 positions" were always either carried by the 
 enemy or abandoned by themselves. 
 
 Hobson learned something of the nature of 
 Santiago's defenses and much more was learned 
 afterwards by Schley when he made the tour of 
 the batteries after the surrender of the city, but 
 it is evident that Hobson did not know all, and 
 that Schley was rather inclined to judge super- 
 ficially. Hobson saw nothing but what he was 
 allowed to see, and Schley only saw what the 
 Spaniards had left in the way of visible defenses. 
 It is from the Spanish revelations of what had 
 been done to guard Cervera's fleet against attack 
 that we gain an exact idea of what our fleet would 
 have had to encounter had it pressed into the 
 harbor to atack the Spaniard. 
 
 When the American army landed at Daiquiri 
 and Siboney, two gun crews were sent from each 
 Spanish ship with three-pounder landing guns 
 and a battery of automatic guns to assist the Span- 
 ish forces. Guns and men took an active part in 
 the battles of El Caney and San Juan, two of the 
 officers and many of the men being killed there. 
 When both of these strongholds were taken the 
 desperate nature of the situation appealed so 
 
194 The Fall of Santiago. 
 
 strongly to both Cervera and Linares that the 
 latter sent an almost despairing message to 
 Blanco who replied, as Governor General of Cuba, 
 by ordering Cervera to make a run for it. On the 
 receipt of these instructions Cervera, on the 
 afternoon of July 2, signalled his captains to a 
 conference at which it was agreed by all the com- 
 manders, except those of the torpedo-boat des- 
 troyers, that it was best to make the attempt to 
 escape at night. The American troops were press- 
 ing forward, taking line after line of intrench- 
 ments; Shafter's indecision and fears were not 
 known of, and the American fleet seemed to be 
 closing in on the harbor, so it was decided to go 
 out that very night at eleven o'clock. As soon as 
 darkness set in the preparatory work for the dash 
 into the open sea was begun. The contact mines, 
 lying to the west of the Merrimac, were removed, 
 the big boom was drawn aside and the ships were 
 massed near the entrance. But night brought no 
 relaxation of vigilance on the part of the Amer- 
 ican blockaders. To the contrary, it was seen 
 that the blockading fleet was drawn up in un- 
 usually close lines, the great white cones of the 
 flash-lights played uninterruptedly on the en- 
 trance; while up on the hills beacon fires were 
 burning. To Cervera and his officers it appeared 
 impossible to get away from this wary, watchful 
 
The Fall of Santiago. 196 
 
 foe and when he ran up the querulous signal, 
 "Do you think we had better wait until day- 
 light," all the captains answered "Yes." 
 
 The Spanish ships were then withdrawn up the 
 harbor, the boom thrown back, the contact mines 
 replaced and daylight waited for. But when day- 
 light came and the ships on'ce more steamed 
 down to the entrance, there lay the blockading 
 fleet close and wary as ever. Fires were all go- 
 ing in the Spaniards' boiler rooms, and at nine 
 o'clock the captains and admirals met for a final 
 conference. It was decided that no more delay 
 was possible, and that the only thing left was to 
 get up all steam possible and, as soon as a four- 
 teen knot power was made, to start. The order of 
 the ships' exits were set in tbis wise : First the In- 
 fanta Maria Teresa, with Cervera on board ; then 
 the Viscaya, then the Almirante Oquendo, then 
 the Cristobal Colon, each with a cable's length 
 headway. It was planned that the three first 
 named were to engage the enemy running and 
 that the Colon, as the fleetest of the cruisers and 
 under cover of this engagement, was to put on full 
 speed to the west and get away to Cienfuegos. 
 Most of the baggage and valuables of the officers 
 was put on board the Colon, for while the up- 
 shot of the fight between the Teresa, Viscaj'a and 
 Oquendo and our ships was in doubt, none was 
 
196 The Fall of Santiago. 
 
 entertained as to the ability of the Colon to out- 
 strip her pursuers. The gunboat destroyers were 
 to follow the Colon and aid in covering the escape 
 of that ship. 
 
 The swift-running, heavy-batteried Brooklyn 
 was the most dreaded of the American ships and 
 all the Spanish captains Avere instructed to make 
 a joint attempt to sink her, every big gun being 
 trained forward of the beam so that on emerging 
 from the entrance all would be aimed at her. 
 While these last instructions were being given, 
 the signalman at El Morro announced that the 
 American flagship had just left for the East and 
 that the Newark and Massachusetts were also well 
 down the coast. It seemed to the Spaniards as 
 though Providence was on their side at last, the 
 captains were hurried to their ships and the dash 
 for liberty was begun. 
 
 The lookout on El Morro had correctly reported. 
 The joint attack on Santiago by the land and sea 
 forces, as an emphatic aid to hasten a capitula- 
 tion, was to be arranged, and Sampson steamed 
 3 down early on this Sunday morning to Siboney 
 for the purpose of consulting with Shafter. As 
 ■ the New York turned eastward she flew the signal 
 "Disregard commander-in-chief's movements." 
 Her departure left Schley in virtual command of 
 the blockading fleet and so it happened that. 
 
 i 
 
The Fall of Santiago. 197 
 
 because of this Sunday morning visit, it was left 
 for Schley to carry out those laconic instructions 
 which he had received from Washington when 
 he reported his discovery of Cervera's fleet. He 
 had been told to "capture or destroy" the Span- 
 ish ships and ho did so. Admiral Sampson's 
 departure for the confabulation at Siboney did 
 not, it is true, shift the command; he was still 
 commander-in-chief of the fleet, and officially was 
 at the head of the American war vessels when 
 they shot and smothered Cervera's lean cruisers 
 out of existence. But, while officially present, 
 he was personally absent and to the plain people, 
 who so stubbornly stick to plain facts and pocket 
 official fictions, it was Schley, Schley and his 
 fighting fellow-commanders to whom is due the 
 glory of the battle of July 3d. 
 
 No one doubts the ability and foresight of Eear 
 Admiral Sampson. After the landing of the army 
 of invasion Sampson instructed his captains to 
 "maintain and display the utmost vigilance in 
 guarding the harbor entrance." This was spe- 
 cifically enjoined on them and they were as spe- 
 cifically told that "if the Spanish admiral ever 
 intends to try to escape he will make that effort 
 now." That possibility was emphatically laid 
 down and the commanders understood and ap- 
 preciated the wisdom and foresight of their chief. 
 
198 The Fall of Santiago. 
 
 But the night was always regarded as the time 
 when Cervera would, in all probability, make his 
 running. The cover of darkness and the con- 
 fusion of a night battle were always considered 
 the elements which Cervera would choose as aids 
 to his escape and, while it cannot be said that 
 nobody dreamed Cervera would bolt for it in full 
 daylight, certainly such a possibility could not 
 have been seriously considered by Sampson or he 
 would not have left the fleet on this Sunday 
 morning. As Cervera had found on the preced- 
 ing night, the American lines were closely drawn 
 about the entrance and the searchlights lit up 
 every inch between the heights of El Morro and 
 La Socapa. But when morning dawned the lines 
 of the blockading squadron were broken. Of 
 the flagship's whereabouts we know. The battle- 
 ship Massachusetts early in the morning had 
 gone to Guantanamo ; the Marblehead was also at 
 that base of supplies; the New Orleans had been 
 sent to Key West and of the numerous auxiliary 
 fleet two only , the converted yacht Gloucester 
 and the converted tugboat Vixen, were left on 
 blockade — the others being widely scattered 
 along the coast from Guantanamo to Acerradores. 
 We know what the Spaniards had been doing, 
 what preparations they had made and how they 
 were lined up behind the shelter of the entrance 
 
The Fall of Santiago, 199 
 
 cliffs "waiting for the signal to run; let us now see 
 Low lay that paet of the American squadron 
 which remained on blockade duty. 
 
 The morning was clear and a painter would 
 have said that tbe sea was turquoise and that the 
 sky from zenith to horizon was shaded from sap- 
 phire to topaz. The American shijjs lay in a 
 long semicircle, with its distance from the shore 
 ranging from about two miles at the horns of tbe 
 crescent to about five miles in the fullness of the 
 bow. The little Vixen lay at the western horn 
 of tbo crescent, she being close under the hills 
 at Cabanas; a mile to the eastward and outward 
 lay the Brooklyn flying Commodore Schley's flag ; 
 next, and at e(iual distances, came the Texas, 
 Iowa, Oregon and Indiana, tbe little Gloucester 
 lying in a corresponding position to the Vixen at 
 the western horn of tbo crescent. In this distri- 
 bution tbe Iowa was at a point about opposite the 
 Santiago Harbor entrance and therefore the fur- 
 thest from the shore. All the ships were headed 
 in; lazily tossing in the long swell, with banked 
 fires and motionless engines. The crews had 
 been called to quarters and were grouped about, 
 clad in tbeir speckless white dress mustering 
 suits and the captain and executive officer of each 
 ship were below inspecting. Sunday service 
 would soon be called and altogether it was a scene 
 
200 The Fall of Santiago. 
 
 of Sabbatb peace at sea. It is well to fill the 
 mind with this idea of the rest and quiet of the 
 American ships on the one side and the alert 
 stillness of the Spanish fleet on the other, in order 
 to appreciate the extraordinary and startling 
 change that took place in a twinkling. It was a 
 transformation scene from the realms of Peace on 
 the Deep to the horror and turmoil of the Battle- 
 field of the Demons of Discord, effected with a 
 suddenness, unique perhaps in the annals of war- 
 fare, and accompanied by such a swift and terrific 
 work of destruction as was certainly undreamed 
 of by the students of the possibilities of modern 
 warships ia action. 
 
 Complete as was the surprise caused by the 
 sudden appearance of Cervera's ships it speaks 
 volumes for the discipline of our men, under 
 what may be called relaxed conditions, that it 
 has been found almost impossible to decide 
 who really did first see the outcoming Span- 
 iards. The lookouts on the Texas, Iowa and 
 Oregon all claim the distinction of being the 
 first to signal the discovery of Cervera's 
 ' attempt to escape, while, were this a boy's history 
 of the war, much pleasant importance might be 
 given to the claim of Joe Gaskin, a Newark lad 
 on board the Iowa, of whom it is said that he had 
 been watching all the morning for Cervera's ships 
 
r 
 
 The Fall of Santiago. 201 
 
 "because he haJ passed a good deal of the night 
 thinking of them." The facts are that all three 
 vessels signaled so simultaneously that the dis- 
 coveries came as one ; Joe Gaskin got his ten dol- 
 lars as a special reward for vigilance, and it was 
 the Oregon wliich put the discovery into effect. 
 Without waiting to bend on and run up her sig- 
 nals the Oregon fired a six-pounder as an alarm 
 and before its echoes had died away the string of 
 parti-colored Hags for signal 250, "The enemy is 
 trying to escape, " "was flying from the masts of 
 the Brooklyn, Texas, Iowa and Oregon. Smoke 
 in the harbor had been seen many times and when 
 it was noticed early this morning not much impor- 
 tance was attached to it. Toward 9 o'clock the 
 wreaths of smoke which rose above the entrance 
 hills grew more pronounced and still they 
 were thought only to indicate activity among the 
 tugs of the bay ; but when at 9 :35 a moving prow 
 showed from behind Cay Smith and the next in- 
 stant a black-hulled cruiser came into view the 
 rousing, heart-prodding truth burst upon the 
 fleet, and then it was that the signals went up 
 and the curtain rose on the transformation 
 scene. 
 
 Orders were issued of course, but they were 
 not needed, for even while the ship-boys went 
 flying through the gangways yelling that 
 
202 The Fall of Santiago. 
 
 the Spaniards -were coming out, the men had 
 doffed their spick-and-span suits and stood 
 stripped at their posts; drums were beating; 
 Lattle-hatches and battle-ports were being put 
 on; guns were loaded and trained and, down- 
 stairs, naked men were piling up the furnaces, 
 hacking open the banked fires and coupling the 
 boilers. As by a common impulse all this was 
 done and as by a common impulse all the warships 
 headed for the entrance. 
 
 It was the Maria Teresa, with Admiral Cervera 
 on board, but not flying the admiral's pennant, 
 which came first into view and it was the Maria 
 Teresa that fired the first shot. As the cruiser 
 cleared Socapa Point her forward turret belched 
 black smoke and an eleven-inch shell came hurt- 
 ling through the air and exploded as it touched 
 the water between the Texas and Iowa. With 
 its explosion came the American answer, an 
 answer from all five warships and an answer that 
 roared like the coming of a tornado and in whose 
 midst, like that of a tornado, there was swift 
 death and destruction. 
 
 For a time it was scarcely possible to decide 
 on precise and separate lines of action or to quite 
 make out the separate points of attack. The 
 Spaniards came out shooting and with the dis- 
 charges of their great guns, added to the volume 
 
From photograph by J. C. Hcmmcnt. 
 
 The " Maria Teresa" after her surrender and as she lay a hulk of twisted steel and usel 
 
 the inland hills is pa: 
 
Copyright, 1898, by W. B. Hearst. 
 close into the Santiago shore. The precipitous and impassable nature ot this shore and 
 'I brought out in this view. 
 
The Fall of Santiago. 203 
 
 of smoke from their funnels, the vessels were 
 soon little more than moving smoke-clouds. They 
 were rather as moving pillars of fire and smoke 
 in each of which the faint outlines of a dark- 
 colored, swift-moving warship could be seen, 
 whilb between and across and around these 
 smoke-clouds there rose and fell a moving 
 line of fountains, where the great shells struck 
 and threw up the sea. Then, to this bank of 
 clouds and congregation of geysers, was added 
 the on-coming wall of smoke with its spits 
 of fire that marked the American fleet; and next 
 the guns of the batteries added their smoke, until 
 the whole sea and coast were covered with great 
 rolling heaps and banks of cloud through which 
 the position of the ships was marked by the flashes 
 of the guns. 
 
 But moving clouds, lightning clouds as were 
 the ships; and full of murk and lurid light as 
 was the whole scene, out of it was soon evolved a 
 fight of definiteness as to plan and of individuality 
 as to contestants. Before that first terrific and 
 wholesale broadside of the American fleet Cer- 
 vera's plans melted away. "With that frightful 
 evidence coming from long range of what he 
 would have to encounter at shorter range the 
 Spanish fleet settled down to one object, that of 
 making its escape. The Maria Teresa, the first to 
 
204 The Fall of Santiago. 
 
 emerge, was also the first to set the new running. 
 Scarcely had the cruiser cleared Soca])a Point 
 than over went her helm and away she sped, due 
 west, heading for that section of the blockading 
 squadron where the line was formed by the 
 Vixen and Brooklyn. The Vixen, it will be re- 
 membered, lay close to shore and Cervera evi- 
 dently thought, in this new and sudden plan, that 
 he could slip by the Vixen without damage on 
 account of her small size, and get away up the 
 coast before the Brooklyn could close in and 
 certainly before the great battleships could bring 
 their massive forms into full action. As the long 
 Castillian cruiser leaped forward the Vixen, with 
 excellent discretion, scampered off to sea. The 
 water was leaping high up the bows of the Brook- 
 lyn as she closed in, her long-range guns turned 
 straight on the fleeing Spaniard. As the two 
 vessels neared it looked for one desperate moment 
 as though the Teresa intended to ram the Brook- 
 lyn, so wheeling with a rapidity that was of a part 
 with the whole engagement the American flagship 
 turned her bow westward and coupling on fresh 
 boilers, ran parallel to the escaping cruiser, 
 blazing away with all her starboard guns. But 
 not alone from the Brooklyn did the Teresa re- 
 ceive her wounds, for even as the great battleships 
 smothered inwards and westward they fired at so 
 
The Fall of Santiago. 205 
 
 long a range that the resulting hits may bo classed 
 among the miracles of gunnery. The very first 
 shot which the Brooklyn fired at the Teresa as 
 the two came into parallel line cut the Spaniard's 
 main -water-supply pipe, but from the Texas and 
 Oregon's giant guns she received the first of her 
 death blows. One shell from the Oregon passed 
 through her port quarter and exploded in the 
 engine room, another landed on her stern and set 
 her afire, while several thirteen-inch shells swept 
 through her, each one at once a battering ram 
 and a hail of far-reaching death. Then, as the 
 Brooklyn brought the Teresa within range of her 
 secondarj' battery the smaller shells of the Amer- 
 ican lodged and burst in her antagonist from 
 stem to stern. 
 
 "While the Teresa was thus receiving the brunt 
 of the first fire, her lean, lank sisters had emerged 
 from the entrance and were set with all their 
 noses pointed west and racing for dear life, with 
 the great American sea-hounds in hot pursuit. 
 As each passed the fated Teresa she sent another 
 shell or two into that doomed craft. There was 
 no time to fight her, nor indeed was there any 
 need to. The Teresa was out of the running. 
 She had put her black muzzle out of Santiago 
 Harbor at 9 :35. At 10 :10 she w^as a burning, 
 riddled hulk, with her fire mains cut fore and aft 
 
206 The Fall of Santiago. 
 
 and no way of putting out the blaze. Two of 
 the thirteen-inch projectiles of the Texas had 
 gone clear through her ; an eight-inch shell from 
 the Brooklyn had entered just forward of the 
 beam on the port side and exploding had cleaned 
 out the compartment with its four deck crews. 
 One six-inch shell had carried away the bridge; 
 another from the Brooklyn's forward turret struck 
 the Spaniard amidships, exploded, tore down the 
 bulkheads, destroyed stanchions, iienetrated the 
 deck, crippled two rapid-fire guns, killed fifteen 
 or twenty men and carried panic everywhere. 
 
 For a moment the Teresa halted and veered, 
 like a stricken man groping in the oncoming 
 dark. To the sailors of our fleet, as they swept 
 by it looked as though she were about to turn 
 and were trying to stagger back into the shelter 
 of the harbor, but when she had half swung a 
 great gush of flame shot upward from her quarter, 
 and it was seen that her commander was about 
 to run her ashore. This he did at 10:35, having 
 found a little cove, really a break in the coast- 
 line, which the Cubans call Nima-Nama. As she 
 struck the beach her colors went down, and the 
 flames leaped up with renewed activity from the 
 shock of her keel on the beach. And so ended the 
 Infanta Maria Teresa, first-class cruiser, late of 
 the Spanish navy. 
 
The Fall of Santiago. 207 
 
 Following the Teresa, and hugging the shore as 
 that ship had done, came the Viscaya,and after her 
 and parallel to her came on the Oregon and Texas, 
 rapidly closing up the gap between them and the 
 Brooklyn, while the Iowa turned in to look after 
 the surrendered Teresa. The same tactics that 
 had obtained in the battle with the Teresa were 
 carried cut in that with the Viscaya, except that 
 the Brooklyn was now so far ahead that she was 
 able to turn slightly in shore in such a way as to 
 cut off the Viscaya's escape. But the cruiser 
 never reached the lino of the Brooklyn's offset. 
 Schley, Clark and Philip thus kept up the race 
 and the fire of the three ships was concentrated 
 on this hapless hulk, while, as the Iowa turned 
 in to look after the Teresa she let fly one spiteful 
 shell at the Viscaya which struck the Spaniard's 
 eleven-inch gun in the forward turret, cutting a 
 furrow out of the side of the gun as though it had 
 been done Avith a cold chisel. The shell exploded 
 half way in the turret, making the vessel stagger 
 and shake in every plate. Every gunner in the 
 turret was killed and the place so choked with 
 corpses that the new crew had to ship the dead 
 through the ammunition hoist to the lower deck. 
 
 The Yiscaj'a remained, however, the special prey 
 of the Brooklyn and Oregon, the Texas having in 
 her run paid most attention to the Oquendo. 
 
208 The Fall of Santiago. 
 
 Exclusive of the innumerable one-pounder and 
 rapid-fire hita which swept the Viscaya's deck 
 she was struck fourteen times bj' large projectiles 
 and eleven times by six-pounders. The eight- 
 inch guns of the Brooklyn and Oregon tore her 
 structure above the armor belt into shreds, while 
 the six-pounders of the two ships actually drove 
 every Spaniard from the deck. Every rapid-fire 
 gun on the Viscaya was silenced because every 
 gunner had been either killed or crippled at his 
 post ; the military tops were filled with dead men; 
 the surgeons had ceased to dress the wounded; 
 the inside woodwork was ablaze and the hospital 
 was a furnace. Men and oflficers acted like peo- 
 ple bereft of their senses. The oflScers screamed 
 their orders and the men rolled here and there 
 like drunkards. Then, at 10 :55, when the whole 
 gun-deck was in flames and the magazines were 
 in danger she, with her flag still flying, was 
 headed for the shore at Acerradores, sixteen 
 miles west of El Morro. Just as she turned for 
 the shore, and when about four hundred yards 
 from the beach, the Texas, in flying past in pur- 
 suit of the Colon, fired a shell from her after-tur- 
 ret. It hit the Viscaya a little forward of amid- 
 ships just above the armor-belt, crashed through 
 her side, crossed the gun-deck, ricocheting from 
 compartment to compartment until it reached the 
 
From photograph by J. C. Hcmment. 
 
 Superstructure and main deck of the " Viscaya," showing the terrible' 
 
Copyright, 1898, by VV. B. Hearst. 
 ruction caused by the exploding American shells and the succeeding fire. 
 
The Tall of Santiago. 209 
 
 forward torpedo-tubes one of wliieh it exploded 
 Torpedo aud shell alike exploded indeed and 
 ■while in its progress over the deck the shell 
 killed eighty men, the double explosion blew out 
 the starboard side of the cruiser and made her a 
 complete wreck. And so ended the Viscaya. 
 
 The end of the 0<iuendo differed but little in 
 its elements of horror from that of the two cruis- 
 ers whose destruction has been described. Some- 
 thing appeared to bo the matter with the machin- 
 ery or engines of this vessel, for though the 
 draught was being forced to such an extent that 
 her funnel-tops were freciuently crested with 
 flames, she had fallen behind the Yiscaya. In con- 
 sequence of her comparative slowness everyone 
 of our warships punished her as she swept along 
 in the great parallel fight. In the case of the 
 Oquendo, too, the pursuing ships had no need 
 of long-range gunnery, but forged in closely to 
 her and overwhelmed her with the fire of their 
 secondary batteries. Only four eight-inch shells 
 struck her and but two six-inch shells. On the 
 other hand she was struck no less than forty -six 
 times by our six-pounders, all of which entered 
 above her armor-belt and exploded within, while 
 the one-pounders from every vessel in the fleet 
 seemed for a time to have been concentrated on 
 her, these small but most mischievous missiles 
 
210 The Fall of Santiago. 
 
 having plowed through, across and along her as 
 a battery of machine-guns might have torn a regi- 
 ment to pieces. She furnished an object lesson 
 of the wonderful rapidity and accuracy of the fire 
 of our small guns that was in its way as interesting 
 and instructive as was the Teresa in showing what 
 the Texas and Oregon could do in the way of 
 landing a giant shell from a moving fortress into 
 a flying target with a few miles between them. 
 
 Captain Eulate, who commanded the Oquendo, 
 declared that it was the carnage caused by the 
 secondary batteries of our ships, and mainly by 
 the Brooklyn which led to his surrrender, the 
 men being literally unable to work their guns. 
 Eulate further reported that the long-range fight- 
 ing, notwithstanding the heavier metal thrown, 
 was as a child's love-pat compared with the 
 thrashing received from the small guns. The 
 rattle of the lighter shot on the ateel decks, the 
 incessant din, the constant flashing of exploding 
 shells and the never ceasing shriek of the projec- 
 tiles made up such a concatenation of horror that 
 it seemed impossible to think of or hear anything 
 outside of this devil's tattoo. The killing inside 
 the ship was something too horrible for descrip- 
 tion. She caught on fire so many times and in 
 so many places that the ironwork was scarcely 
 bearable to the touch and the deck seemed red 
 
The Fall of Santiago. 211 
 
 hot. Every beam was twisted and torn from its 
 original position. It was absolutely beyond hu- 
 man endurance to hold out further; she was a 
 shambles above and below ; the track of the shells 
 was marked by human remains. One eight-inch 
 shell struck the forward turret at the gun open- 
 ing; every man in the turret was killed and the 
 officer in the firing-hood was blown to pieces. 
 The engineer force was penned up because of 
 the battle-gratings being jammed. So having 
 reached a point opposite the beach where the 
 Teresa was run, she was headed in about five hun- 
 dred yards above her helpless consort, with 
 flames rising fiercely from stem to stern. And 
 BO, with explosions that still further wrecked her 
 shattered sides and deck, theAlmirante Oquendo 
 was finished. 
 
 There remained then the torpedo-destroyers 
 and the Cristobal Colon. The plans of Admiral 
 Cervera were being wofully interfered with. For 
 a time, and really in due sequence as the death 
 of the Colon came later, the desperate running of 
 that swift cruiser can be passed over while atten- 
 tion is paid to the fate of the destroyers— those 
 untried craft concerning whose possibilities so 
 much had been written and feared. The last of 
 the cruisers was two miles from the entrance 
 when the Pluton came into view, closely followed 
 
212 The Fall of Santiago. 
 
 by the Furor. Their low black forms seemed to 
 waver for a moment and their bows were pointed 
 eastward; then, following the course of the cruis- 
 ers they, too, headed for the west. Blood-cur- 
 dling tales had been told of what these wicked 
 little craft would do; of their thirty-knot speed; 
 of their magical ability to maneuver and of 
 their power to launch a torpedo and get away 
 unscathed with the swiftness of an enraged wasp. 
 Instead of all this, the reality was two wavering 
 little boats which could not even run away, but 
 which slowly moved into the shadow of the shore 
 as though seeking to avoid observation. On our 
 side there was no apparent thought as to the fero- 
 cious possibilities of the destroyers, for the Ore- 
 gon scarcely deigned to pepper them as she 
 dashed to the front; the Texas treated them to a 
 secondary battery shower as she too moved west; 
 the Iowa, running neck and neck with the Oregon, 
 swerved a little to tear the stern of the Furor to 
 pieces with one fierce shell and then passed on, 
 contemptuously leaving the completer destruc- 
 tion of the craft to the little Gloucester. 
 
 The Gloucester had been the millionaire Mor- 
 gan's yacht, known as Corsair No. 2, and even as 
 a converted gunboat was as harmless a looking 
 pirate as ever put the quietus to a couple of dis- 
 tressed Spanish sea-bravos. The captain of the 
 
The Fall of Santiago. 213 
 
 Gloucester was Lieutenant Harry P. WaiuAvright, 
 who had been the last luan to leave the hulk of 
 the Maine as she settled into the silt of Havana 
 Harbor. Dashing right inside of the line of our 
 cruisers until she was close under the guns of El 
 Morro, and in the full fire of those batteries, of the 
 stern-chasers of the fleeing cruisers and of the 
 possibilities of the terrible things the destroyers 
 could do, the little yacht darted in to tackle them 
 at close quarters. Carrying four six-pounder 
 rapid-fire guns, four three-pounder rapid-fire 
 guns and two small Colt automatics and with 
 a complement of ninety-three ofiicers and men 
 the little unarmored 800-ton yacht started in to 
 finish up the two Spanish fighting craft, each as 
 long as she, each built to destroy, each carrying 
 two fourteen-pound, two six-pound and four one- 
 pound rapid-fire guns, and two fourteen-inch 
 torpedo tubes, with a total complement of one 
 hundred and thirty-four men. The gun work on 
 the Gloucester was record-making; empty shells 
 rolled about the deck, breech-locks grew so hot 
 that they refused to work, the men were stripped 
 naked and though the Spaniards shot valiantly 
 in their attempt to sink their tiny antagonist, 
 not a shot struck her. Pushing forward until 
 within five hundred yards of the destroyers, fir- 
 ing now at one now at the other the Gloucester 
 
214 The Fall of Santiago. 
 
 pressed on. Suddenly there was a flash, not that 
 of a gun, on board the Pluton and she began to 
 settle. At the sight of this catastrophe the Fu- 
 ror circled back to El Morro as though running 
 away from her wounded sister, and then circled 
 back as though ashamed of her conduct and as 
 though she were returning to assist in the Pluton 's 
 dying struggles. But again she turned, and it was 
 then seen that she was drifting and simply mov- 
 ing in a circle because of a jammed helm. For 
 all this the Gloucester kept up her withering fire 
 until the Furor went down by the head and sank 
 in deep water just west of Cabanas, while the Plu- 
 ton managed to get close enough to run ashore. 
 "Wainwright had remembered the Maine. 
 
 Among those saved was Lieutenant Boado- 
 Suances of the Pluton and some days after, when 
 he was able to think clearly, for the horror of his 
 experience almost made him mad, he told his 
 story. Of shattered steam-pipes and escaping 
 steam scalding to death the engineers and 
 stokers as they stood; of men cut in twain by 
 fragments of giant shells; of the boats thrown 
 on their beam ends from the force of the shells* 
 impact and torn to pieces from the explosions; 
 of other shells whose path could be marked by 
 splashes in the sea as they came bounding toward 
 them, sure as death and straight as an arrow, at 
 
The Fall of Santiago. 215 
 
 whose sight men screamed shrilly in their 
 fear. 
 
 There remained then the Colon. For a time it 
 looked as though the plan for her escape by runn- 
 ing inside the line of the other cruisers might be 
 carried to a successful conclusion. In the din 
 and smother and roar of the other engagements 
 this fleet ship coursed westward, gaunt-looking 
 and rapid as a hound. But there were sharp 
 eyes and nimble minds on board the American 
 ships. The Spaniard had reeled off many a good 
 knot in her flight and of her pursuers all but 
 two were left moderately well behind— the Brook- 
 lyn and the Oregon, a cruiser and a battleship. 
 In their running fight the two Americans pressed 
 on after the Spaniard in a line that would have 
 brought them broadside along her— the Spaniard 
 following the trend of the coast. But this coast 
 dipped into bay which ended in Cape Cruz to 
 the westward. Schley saw the cape and imme- 
 diately turned out and headed for it, and when 
 the Spaniard saw this move he knew that his 
 case was hopeless. As the Brooklyn swung out 
 the Oregon put on a burst of speed and followed 
 the Colon, and it was at this time that the battle- 
 ship made for herself a record among the fight- 
 ing machines of the world, and set the fleet 
 a-roaring. 
 
216 The Fall of Santiago. 
 
 Put together like a watch they huew her to be; 
 steady as an East ludiaman she had proved her- 
 self to be in her ever-memorable voyage up and 
 down the oceans of the New World ; big as a city 
 block of buildings they could see her to be, but 
 when this monstrous tioating fortress went leap- 
 ing over and through the waves like a clipper- 
 ship and that without any apparent effort, her 
 smoke-stacks being crested only with the faintest 
 Laze, men threw up their hands in amazement. 
 
 From iighting mast to fighting mast the Oregon 
 and the Brooklyn signaled the range to and fro 
 and both began firing. It was then one o'clock p.m. 
 and the distance between battleship and cruiser 
 was six thousand yards. As the Oregon dashed 
 along in the general pursuit of and fight with the 
 other Spaniards she looked indeed a floating for- 
 tress, firing fore, aft and abeam at once, but now 
 she settled down into a steady target-practice. 
 Now, too, the Colon having seen the error of her 
 way was making every effort to slip past Cape 
 Cruz, beyond which lay safety. Every pound of 
 steam was crowded on and she was going a nine- 
 teen-kuot gait. But tear through the water as 
 she might, the long slim Brooklyn was swiftly 
 and surely getting between her and the headland. 
 Captain Clark's great shells were beginning to 
 fall around her, while behind the Oregon the 
 
The Fall of Santiago. 217 
 
 Texas could be seen poundiuj^ along in her wake 
 under a forced draught. The Oregon's thirteen- 
 inch shells fell nearer and nearer to the Colon 
 and the S{)aniard was headed for the shore and 
 her flag hauled down. 
 
 Hers was the most inglorious end of all the 
 Spanish fleet. She was in good fighting comrais- 
 sion when run ashore. Having kept behind the 
 other ships for protection, the Colon was hit with 
 large projectiles about six times, these having 
 been made hy the Brooklyn and Oregon. One 
 eight-inch shell went clean through her withoiit 
 exploding, one five-inch hit her just above the 
 armor-belt and one six-inch struck her on the 
 bow, but no blow was fatal or even serious. 
 
 When the Colon turned in and ran her nose 
 on the coral keys about the mouth of the Eio 
 Tarquino, forty-eight miles west of Santiago, she 
 was a surrendered ship in good condition. When 
 the Americans reached her she was a wreck and 
 bad been wantonly made so. The breech-locks 
 of the guns had been torn out and thrown over- 
 board. Every inlet for water had been opened 
 and the wrecking-gang of the Merrimac had not 
 worked more religiously and efficiently to sink 
 that collier than did the officers and men of the 
 Colon to wreck and scuttle her after surrender. 
 Only one life had been lost and she had less than 
 twenty men wounded. 
 
218 The Fall of Santiago. 
 
 The New York's share in the fight was that of 
 an observer. It will be remembered that she had 
 gone down to Sibouey for a Sunday morning call 
 on Shaf ter. At half-past nine the sound of heavy 
 guns reached the flagship and turning westward 
 the bridge-officer saw and reported "Firing from 
 the eastern and western batteries and the ships 
 returning it." A moment's confusion, a skurry- 
 ing of orderlies and the New York's bow was 
 brought around for Santiago. Eight knots was 
 all she could make at first, only two boilers being 
 in use, but new fires were started, the 
 forward engines coupled and as the deck was 
 cleared for action she soon gathered speed. A a 
 she swept by theKesolute that gunboat was sent 
 back to Sibouey to cable to Playa del Este to order 
 up the Massachusetts and all other vessels there- 
 abouts, and the torpedo boat Ericsson was gath- 
 ered up in the westward run. As she came oppo- 
 site El Morro the flagship fired her forward four- 
 inch guns, four shots in all and these were her only 
 shots for the day. They were aimed at the Terror 
 and one was thought to have struck the upper 
 works of that destroyer. The others went wide. 
 As the flagship swept on, the destroyers were seen 
 to be total wrecks, and Wainwright was busy 
 succoring his enemies. 
 
 Five miles beyond the harbor entrance, 
 
The Fall of Santiago. 219 
 
 Sampson saw the Spanish flagship Infanta 
 Maria Teresa beached and flying a white flag; 
 less than a mile beyond at Juan Gonzales, Samp- 
 son saw the Almiraute Oqueudo beached and 
 ablaze ; opposite Acerradores, Sampson passed the 
 Viscaya ashore and blazing like the Oquendo. 
 What Sampson had so far seen of the Spanish 
 fleet was a succession of battered and blazing 
 bulks. There remained only the Colon, and the 
 flagship pressed on to be at least in at the death 
 of that cruiser, but when the flagship reached 
 the Eio Tarquino the Colon had surrendered. 
 Sampson there received Schley's report of his 
 glorious victorj', took charge of the transfer 
 of prisoners and placed Lieutenant-Commander 
 James G. Cogswell, executive officer of the 
 Oregon, in command of the Colon. 
 
 It was thought that the Colon might be saved 
 and the Vixen was set to tow her inshore, but 
 the tug could not move the Spaniard's huge bulk. 
 Next the flagship muzzled her sharp prow with a 
 rope fender and, it being then night time, set the 
 glare of her searchlight on the Spaniard's star- 
 board quarter and moved her own engines ahead. 
 Slowly the Colon swung around under this great 
 pressure and it was hoped that a new vessel would 
 be added there and then to our navy. Suddenly, 
 however, the Colon rolled over on her port side 
 
220 The Fall of Santiago. 
 
 with her starboard guns pointing straight and 
 silently upward. So ended the Colon, and in this 
 ■way was the New York in at the death. 
 
 Having thus made an end of Cervera's fleet and 
 done their best to blow the Spanish crews into 
 eternity, the American commanders remembered 
 that it was Sunday and that the enemy being in 
 a pit it was their duty as members of the church 
 militant to drag him out thereof. All up and 
 down the coast, therefore, where had raged the 
 tumult of battle the boats and launches of our 
 warships were busy in the work of succor. The 
 Gloucester's boats rescued the survivors of the 
 burning Pluton as they swam and then steamed 
 to the beach on which were gathered the sur- 
 vivors of the Teresa. Among these was Admiral 
 Cervera, a short, paunchy gray-bearded gentle- 
 man, who in his underclothes stepped forward 
 and surrendered. He explained his personality 
 and was transferred to the Iowa where he re- 
 ceived the honors of his rank and a new suit of 
 clothes. The Indiana lowered her boats and at 
 different points along the shore picked up seven 
 officers and two hundred and three men. From 
 the sinking Yiscaya and the beach near her and 
 the sea about her, the Iowa picked up thirty- 
 eight officers and two hundred and thirty-eight 
 men; whUe "W. R. Hearst, who with that origi- 
 
The Fall of Santiago. 221 
 
 nality of enterprise which had made him and his 
 paper, the New York Journal, of national promi- 
 nence, and who had gone to Cuba as the war cor- 
 respondent of his own paper, rounded up a squad 
 of the Yiscaya's men and delivered them out of 
 the hands of the Cubans into those of the officers 
 of the St. Louis. So it went on for hours, for 
 the rest of the day and the coming night in truth, 
 with shelter and courtes}' to the officers, with 
 care and comfort to the men, with nursing and 
 medical attendance for the wounded, and with 
 decent burial for the dead. 
 
 It was the same spirit of mercy to the van- 
 quished which led Captain John W. Philip of the 
 Texas to forbid his men to cheer when the 
 Viscaya ran up the white flag. So long as there 
 was any fight in the Spaniard he was to be 
 battered and pelted and torn, but when the token 
 of submission was flying over a vessel that had 
 been changed from a swift-moving thing full of 
 life and action into something that was at once a 
 furnace and a charnel-house, it was a triumph to 
 be sure, but not a time for noisy jubilation. So, 
 "Don't cheer men," cried Captain Philip, as the 
 jackies began to yell and caper, "those poor 
 devils are dying." 
 
 It was in a tenderer and still higher spirit that 
 this same Captain Philip, when the fight was over. 
 
222 The Fall of Santiao^o 
 
 o 
 
 did something that ehoTved him possessed of a 
 moral courage as great in degree as the physical 
 courage that had kept him on the bridge all 
 through the engagement in the fierce give-and- 
 take fight between the mighty engines of de- 
 struction. The men with their stripped bodies 
 black with the grime of battle; the decks strewn 
 with the splintered evidences of fight; the great 
 guns still steaming, with their breech-locks turned 
 open to the air; the turret crews stumbling out 
 of their steel furnaces; and the delirium of victory 
 over all — surely this was a time and these were 
 the elements for the noise and rejoicing of ma- 
 terial things, the time to yell for themselves and 
 their good ship. But to Captain Philip it was 
 som-ething more than a victory of men and ma- 
 terial and beckoning to the crew to gather around 
 him he stood straight before them, with a clear 
 unflinching light in his little beady eyes and tak- 
 ing oS his cap said : 
 
 "I want to make public acknowledgment here 
 that I believe in God, the Father Almighty, and 
 I w'ant all you ofiicers and men to lift your hats 
 and from your hearts offer silent thanks to the 
 Almighty." 
 
 Plain, simple words and uttered with the plain 
 simple faith of a child; yet the heart of the peo- 
 ple has been moved more deeply by this avowa), 
 
TheFall of Santiago. 223 
 
 of the Lord God of Gideon than by all tho other 
 thrilling incidents of tho great fight of July 3d — ■ 
 whatever may bo the cause of the moving, -whether 
 the sentimentality that follows the reading of 
 great deeds as a transient feeling, or the in- 
 herent Puritanism of tlio nation as a settled fact. 
 The statistics of this great eea-battlo almost 
 bore out the Philipian idea of a providential 
 guardianship. The Spanish losses were five hun- 
 dred killed, sixteen hundred prisoners, mostly 
 wounded, and the total destruction of four cruis- 
 sers and two torpedo-boat destroyers, represent- 
 ing a value of over twenty million dollars. 
 The American list of casualties stood at one 
 man killed, chief yeoman Geo. H. Ellis of the 
 Brooklyn, and two wounded, and superficial 
 damages which it would cost a few thousand 
 dollar to repair. But the hard logic of fact 
 shows that the destruction of the Spanish 
 fleet and the escape of ours was due to relative 
 gunnery; to good gunnery on our side and to 
 bad gunnery on theirs. From the moment of the 
 fleet's emerging from Santiago to the beaching 
 of the Colon, the Spaniards fired as best they 
 might. But most of the Spanish shots fell over 
 our ships and it was the expert belief of our 
 oflScers that the enemy did not change their 
 range. 
 
224 The Fall of Santiago. 
 
 Another reason ^vh3' the Spanish gunnery was 
 harmless lay in the demoralization of the gun- 
 ners. As we have seen, the Spanish officers 
 acknowledged that the scenes on board their 
 ships were those of cumulative horrors growing 
 out of the din and slaughter of battle, but the 
 men have stated that each ship was a drunken in- 
 ferno; that gunners and stokers were plied wuth 
 rum ; that treasure was scattered about the decks ; 
 that the cannoneers reeled drunkenly about their 
 guns and that the officers shot them down as they 
 reeled. For the credit of humanity it is hoped 
 the stories are exaggerated; to the shame of 
 Spain it must be said the evidence is strongly 
 against her. 
 
 Cervera himself, as he stood on the quarter- 
 deck of the Iowa, furnished the key to the situ- 
 ation, when he said "the rapidity and accuracy 
 of the American fire was almost incredible. " That 
 was just it. It was the men behind the guns 
 who won this famous victory and the Spaniard 
 was smashed by American gunnerj'. 
 
 Here are a few concrete facts to remember in 
 this connection, given even at the risk of repeti- 
 tion : Cervera came out at 9 :35 a. m. At 10 :10 
 the Teresa was on fire. At 10:15 the Furor 
 and Pluton were blown up or sinking. At 
 10 :30 the Oquendo was beached and had sur- 
 
The Fall of Santiago. 225 
 
 rendered. At 10 :35 tbo Teresa had followed 
 suit. At 11 tbo Viscaya hauled down her colors. 
 At 1 :15 the Colon had given up the fight and 
 had been wrecked. Including the chase of the 
 Colon it had taken us three hours and forty min- 
 utes to destroy the Spanish squadron. Leaving I 
 out the chase of the Colon, the fight was won in 
 one hour and ten minutes, while such was the 
 condition of the enemy that victory was assured 
 us in thirty minutes. During that decisive 
 tliirty minutes we fired over seventeen hundred 
 shots, the reports of the discharges being 
 literally incessant. By large-sized missiles the 
 Oquendo was struck fifty-five times; the Teresa 
 thirty-seven times; the Viscaj'a twenty-five and 
 the Colon six; while the hits by the smaller guns 
 were in each case countless. The fight started 
 at a range of six thousand yards, while at two 
 thousand and two thousand five hundred yards 
 two torpedo boats and two cruisers were anni- 
 hilated. The closest fighting of the whole 
 engagement, though this record may bring 
 sorrow to the artists who persist in laying their 
 battling ships alongside each other, was at eleven 
 hundred yards, when the Brooklyn and Yiscaya 
 were settling accounts. 
 
 As to tlie other lessons of the great fight ; of the 
 mute evidences furnished by the Oquendo of how 
 
226 The Fall of Santiago. 
 
 a ship looks when riven by au internal explosion 
 as compared to that furnished by the Maine; of 
 the incalculable damage possible when modern 
 war ships meet; of the unspeakable horrors tliat 
 were found within the charred hulks of the Span- 
 ish ships and of the great leap forward which the 
 United States navy made in the appreciation of 
 Europe's War Lords — of all these things much 
 could be and doubtless will be said, but there is 
 no place for it here. 
 
The Fall of Santiago. 227 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 HOW TOEAL SUIlllENDERED MOKE THAN WAS ASKED FOR. 
 
 When Shafter sent his ultimatum of shell or 
 surrender to Toral at 8 :20 on the morning of July 
 3, Toral replied with a refusal to acknowledge 
 himself beaten, and it was for the exchange of 
 these communications between the two command- 
 ers that the white flag was set up between the 
 opi)Osing lines to the surprise of our men on San 
 Juan hill, as has been described in a previous 
 chapter. The replj- of Toral to Shafter's demand 
 was as follows: 
 
 Santiago de Cuba, July 3. 
 
 "To His Excellency the General Commanding 
 the forces of the United States, San Juan River: 
 
 "Sir: I have the honor to reply to your com- 
 munication of to-day, written at 8 :20 a.m. and 
 received at 1 p.m., demanding the surrender of 
 this city ; in the contrary case in announcing to 
 me that yon will bombard the city, and that I 
 advise the foreigners and women and children 
 
228 The Fall of Santiago. 
 
 that they must leave the city before 10 o'clock 
 to-morrow morning. 
 
 "It is my duty to say to you that this city will 
 not surrender, and that I will inform the foreign 
 consuls and inhabitants of the contents of your 
 message. 
 
 "Very respectfully, 
 
 "Jose Toral, 
 "Commander-in-Chief, Fourth Corps." 
 
 "When Toral sent this brave reply Cervera was 
 a fighting or fleeing possibility and something, 
 that sometbing to which the Spaniard is always 
 clinging, might be done to relieve the be- 
 leaguered city. Pando was coming too, Pando 
 with his fresh army from Holquin; the gunnery 
 of our ships had not so far wrought much 
 havoc to the city or forts — and so he sent his 
 answer. He informed the British, Portuguese, 
 Chinese and Norwegian consuls of the threatened 
 bombardment, and in consonance with this 
 notification these ofiicials came to the American 
 lines and preferred the request that the bombard- 
 ment be postponed until 10 o'clock a.m. Thurs- 
 day the 5th, asking further that the non-combat- 
 ants, numbering between fifteen thousand and 
 twenty tnousand, might be allowed to occupy the 
 town of El Caney. To this req.uest Shafter ac- 
 ceded, and sent the following notification to 
 Toral : 
 
The Fcall of Santiago. 229 
 
 "Com man ding General Spanish forces, Santiago 
 de Cuba, July 3. 
 
 "Sir: In consideration of the request of the 
 consuls and officers of your city for delay in car- 
 rying out my intention to fire on the city, and in 
 the interest of the poor women and children, who 
 will suffer very greatly by their enforced depar- 
 ture from the city, I have the honor to announce 
 that I will delay such action solely in their in- 
 terest until noon of the 5fch, providing during 
 the interval your forces make no demonstration 
 whatever upon mine. I am, with great respect, 
 your obedient servant, 
 
 "W. E. Shaftek." 
 
 When the news of the destruction of Cervera's 
 fleet reached our headquarters Shafter not only 
 sent it to the front, where it was received with a 
 round of cheers that stretched from one end of 
 the line to the other and with the blare of the 
 only band that had managed to keep together, 
 but with excellent policy sent it also to the 
 commander of the Spanish forces in San- 
 tiago. 
 
 Whether the lookout at El Morro had reported 
 to Santiago the woful result of Cervera's attempt 
 to escape; whether he had not been able to make 
 out clearly the full extent of the horror in all its 
 smother of smoke and its confusion of rushing 
 ships; or whether Shatter's brief bulletin was 
 
230 The Fall of Santiago. 
 
 the first intimation received by Linares and Toral- 
 that Spain had lost another fleet — all these are 
 points that have not as yet been definitely settled. 
 It is definitely known, however, that the reception 
 of the news of this additional disaster caused the 
 most poignant grief to the Spanish command- 
 ers, and had it not been for their pachyderma- 
 tous pride and their strict adherence to the 
 punctilios of deference to higher authorities, the 
 demand of Shaf ter would have been there and then 
 acceded to. 
 
 As it was, Governor-General Blanco was com- 
 municated with at Havana, and in obedience to 
 the suggestion received from him Toral proposed 
 that the truce still continue and that, during it, 
 commissioners be appointed from both sides to 
 discuss the question of capitulation. 
 
 In deference to this small step pacifically for- 
 ward the day of general attack by land and sea 
 was postponed, for while Shafter professed to 
 the Spaniards that he was opposed to the round- 
 about road to surrender along which commission- 
 ers would possibly travel, he saw at once that 
 this parleying on the part of Toral pointed but 
 one way. 
 
 The situation within each line was at this time 
 thoroughly characteristic. On the American 
 side, the persistent strengthening of the position 
 
Maj. Gen. W. B. Shafter. 
 
The Fall of Santiago. 231 
 
 as the practical advantage of the extension of 
 time; on the Spanish side, increased distress and 
 a desperate evasion of the inevitable. Toral's 
 next move in this impractical direction was the 
 request to Shafter that the cable operators, who 
 had left Santiago on the first notification of bom- 
 bardment, might be permitted to return to the 
 cit3' in order that the situation might be laid be- 
 fore the government at Madrid. Shafter con- 
 sented to this, but, as a rider, notified Toral that too 
 much time was being consumed in preliminaries, 
 and that a Yes or No to the demand for surrender 
 must be received before noon of July 9, or the 
 threatened bombardment would surely begin. 
 
 The cable operators returned to Santiago on 
 July 8, and when the 9th came Toral was ready 
 with another move for delay and asked that in- 
 stead of a bombardment the American commander 
 consider this proposition: that he, Toral, evacu- 
 ate the city, provided his forces be permitted to 
 retire immediately to Holquin. Shafter refused 
 to consider this suggestion, and ordered Kan- 
 dolph's Brigade which had just landed to march 
 to the front and to bring its field artillery with it. 
 Then Toral sent back to say that he had been 
 ordered to make this offer by his government 
 over the cable which Shafter had so generously 
 placed at his disposal, and that he had been fur- 
 
232 The Fall of Santiago. 
 
 ther requested to ask that the suggestion be laid 
 before the government at Washington. Then 
 Shafter saw that he had been deftly cornered, 
 again postponed the bombardment, forwarded 
 the request to Washington and strengthened his 
 lines around the Holquin road. In this fashion it 
 happened that by the curiously circuitous way of 
 the single cable from Santiago that had escaped 
 capture — for oddly enough it was only found, and 
 that accidentally, by the anchor of the Massa- 
 chusetts off Aguadores on the day of the surren- 
 <jer — and so it happened, I say, that over this 
 cable via the generals in command on the bat- 
 tlefield and our appropriated cable from Playa del 
 Este, the authorities at Washington and Madrid 
 were in communication for the first time since 
 Woodford had received his passports. In the same 
 roundabout way, but in the most direct language, 
 Shafter was instructed to inform Toral, for the 
 benefit of Sagasta, that the unconditional surren- 
 der of Santiago must be granted, or fire would be 
 opened along the entire American line on the 
 morning of July 11. 
 
 Possibly Toral thought that in view of the 
 many postponements he had secured this,new ulti- 
 matum would not be rigorously insisted on. In 
 this, however, he was mistaken, for when July 11 
 came, with it came the thunder of the great guns 
 
The Fall of Santiago. 233 
 
 from the ships, the cough of the Vesuvius and 
 the eai-th(iuake result of its dyuauiite shells, and 
 the roar of Randolph's heavy siege pieces. Some 
 of the giant shells from Sampson's ships reached 
 the city, and the men at San Juan could see whole 
 squares crumble where the steel projectiles ex- 
 ploded. The firing from the lines was mainly 
 directed against the Spanish trenches and was 
 but feebly replied to. Of loss of life there was 
 little, Santiago being practically deserted by 
 everyone except the garrison, and El Cauey and 
 the inland roads therefrom to Siboney being 
 crowded with tens of thousands of refugees. It 
 was intended as an object lesson, as an emphatic 
 reminder that an answer to a certain question 
 •was being delayed. Yet with all the havoc 
 caused by the bombardment and with a full 
 knowledge of their condition, the Spanish leaders 
 obstinately clung to their determination to sur- 
 render in obedience to commands from Madrid 
 and not on the demand of Washington. Then it 
 was that Linares, whose pride was broked down 
 by sickness and pain, sent the following appeal to 
 his government, one of the most pathetic revela- 
 tions of the Spanish helplessness and hopeless- 
 ness at Santiago that can be imagined : 
 
234 The Fall of Santiago. 
 
 "Official cablegram, July 12, 1898. 
 "To the Minister of "War from the General-in- 
 Cbief of the Division of Santiago de Cuba: 
 
 "Although confined to my bed by great weak- 
 ness and in much pain, the situation of the long- 
 suffering troops here occupies my mind to such 
 an extent that I deem it my duty to address Your 
 Excellency that the state of affairs may be ex- 
 plained. 
 
 "Enemy's lines very near the town and on ac- 
 count of the nature of the ground our lines are 
 in full view from them. Troops weak ; sick in 
 considerable proportion not sent to hospitals 
 owing to the necessity for keeping them in the 
 intrenchments. Horses and mules without the 
 usual allowance of forage. In the midst of the 
 wet season, with twenty hours' daily fall of rain 
 in the trenches, which are simply ditches dug in 
 the ground, without any permanent shelter for 
 the men, who have nothing but rice to eat and no 
 means of changing or drying their clothing. 
 Considerable losses; field officers and company 
 officers killed, wounded and sick, deprive the 
 troops of necessary orders in critical moments. 
 
 "Under these circumstances it is impossible 
 to fight our way out , because in attempting to 
 do so our force would be lacking one-third of 
 the men, who could not leave, and we would be 
 weakened beside by casualties caused by the en- 
 emy, resulting finally in a veritable disaster, 
 without saving our diminished battalions. In 
 order to get out, protected by the Holquin divis- 
 ion, it will be necessary for me to break the en- 
 emy's line. For this operation the Hohiuin 
 
The Fall of Santiago. 235 
 
 division will require eight days and will have to 
 bring a large amount of rations, which it is im- 
 Ijossible to tranHjJort. The solution of the ques- 
 tion is ominously imposed upon us. 
 
 "Surrender is inevitable and we can only suc- 
 ceed in prolonging the agony. The sacrifice is 
 useless, and the enemy understand this. Tbej' 
 see our lines, and theirs being well established 
 and close up, they tire out our men without expos- 
 ing themselves, as they did yesterday', when they 
 cannonaded us on land with such an elevation that 
 we were unable to see their batteries, and from 
 the sea by a squadron which had a perfect range 
 and bombarded the town in sections with math- 
 ematical precision. 
 
 "The complete exodus of the inhabitants, in- 
 sular as well as peninsular, includes the occupants 
 of the public offices, with few exceptions. 
 There only remains the clergy, and they to-day 
 started to leave the town with the archbishop 
 at their head. 
 
 "The defenders here cannot now begin a cam- 
 paign full of enthusiasm and energy. They 
 came here three years ago struggling against the 
 climate, privations and fatigue, and now they are 
 placed in these sad circumstances, where they 
 have no food, no physical force and no means of 
 recuperating. The ideal for them is lacking, 
 because they are defending the property of those 
 that have abandoned it and of those that now are 
 being fed by the American forces. The honor 
 of the army has its limits, and I appeal to the 
 opinion of the whole nation as to whether these 
 long-suffering troops have not kept it safely 
 
236 The Fall of Santiago. 
 
 many times since May 18, -when they were sub- 
 jected to the first cannonade. If it is necessary 
 that the sacrifice be endured, for reasons of 
 which I am ignorant, or that some one shall as- 
 sume the responsibility of the unfortunate termi- 
 nation which I have anticipated and mentioned in 
 a number of telegrams, I faithfully offer myself 
 on the altars of my country for the one, and for 
 the other I will retain the command for the pur- 
 pose of signing the surrender, for my modest rep- 
 utation is of little value as compared with the 
 country's interests. Linaees. " 
 
 But pitiful as was the condition of the Spanish 
 soldiers, that of the American forces was also bad, 
 was indeed wretched. When the great fight was 
 over, from the firing line along San Juan's crest 
 all down the muddy, sodden road to Siboney 
 was an unending though halting string of maimed 
 and shattered men ; the ambulance-carts — 
 crowded like a potter's field — jolted down to the 
 hospitals; the surgeon's field-tents were overrun 
 and the center of patient men in pain; up and 
 down the eight weary ful miles of mire, white- 
 faced lads were dragging themselves with aimless 
 looks on their faces; and anywhere, wherever they 
 might be found, writhing Spaniards were being 
 tenderb' but hurriedly cared for by our surgeons, 
 while a surprised look crept over the poor fellows' 
 faces, or quiet Spaniards were being hurriedly 
 
Gen. Linares. 
 
The Fall of Santiago. 237 
 
 buried wben no look could come over their faces 
 at all. Our trenches too, like those of the Span- 
 iards, -^vere ditches of muddy water and our men 
 had to stand in these, wet from the waist down- 
 ward and parboiled from the waist upward. 
 Despite the truce, incessant alertness was neces- 
 sar3' and trenches were constantly being deepened 
 and extended. The commissariat was deficient, 
 and the need of the necessities from which the 
 men had debarrassed themselves on their march 
 to the front was again acutely felt. Sickness was 
 beginning to appear — had appeared in fact — an 
 ugly persistent malarious fever which seized the 
 men like a foe in the dark, wrestled with them and 
 left them helpless. Then from crowded El Caney 
 and the embowered pest-hole of Siboney rumors 
 came that the dreaded yellow-jack had appeared, 
 and all too soon these rumors were found to be 
 well-founded. First a man here and there 
 crawled to the doctor with all the telltale 
 symptoms upon him. Then they were found by 
 batches, pest-camps were established, and all too 
 late Siboney was burned out of existence. The 
 excitement of fight was gone and in its place was 
 present the horrible depression that came alike 
 as a collapse after such a tremendous physical 
 and nervous strain and as the natural accom- 
 paniment of the knowledge that the plague had 
 
238 The Fall of Santiago. 
 
 appeared and that the Spaniards' invisible ally- 
 was at work. 
 
 Things were bad euongh, wretched enough 
 with us indeed. But here the similarity of con- 
 ditions ended. Back of us was a strong, rich 
 government, with one fixed object in view; a 
 victorious navy with no floating foe to take ac- 
 count of; reinforcements on a score of hurrying 
 transports and others already at the Cuban base 
 of supplies, and best of all the great American 
 heart which beat in unison with that of the 
 army. On the other hand was an army without 
 support of navy, with its local reinforcements 
 cut off, and hampered by a divided government, 
 incapable alike of rendering assistance or appre- 
 ciating the desperate bravery of its despairing 
 soldiers. 
 
 General Miles arrived almost on the echo of the 
 bombardment, and when another flag of truce ap- 
 peared in the valley that lay between San Juan 
 and Santiago, and a message was sent to the 
 American headrpaarters repeating the proposition 
 for the appointment of commissioners, the re- 
 turn proposition was made that in such a dis- 
 cussion the chiefs themselves should meet. A 
 conference of these was set for July 14, at noon, 
 and at that hour Generals Miles, Shafter and 
 "Wheeler met General Toral and aids underneath 
 
The Fall of Santiago. 239 
 
 a cieba tree halfway between the lines. Toral 
 informed our generals that he had received in- 
 structions from Captain-General Blanco to con- 
 sent that the commissioners should have plenary' 
 power to negotiate the terms of a surrender. 
 
 For himself, Toral named as commissioners 
 General Escario, Lieutenant-Colonel Fortan and 
 Albert Mason, the British Vice-Consul; while 
 Shafter named Generals "\A'heeler and Ewers ajid 
 Captain Miley. The commissioners met under 
 the same cieba tree at 2 o'clock in the after- 
 noon, Toral being also present. Though so near 
 a settlement, the dilatory and evasive tactics of 
 the Spaniards were consistently manifest. It 
 was stated by Toral that the sanction of Blanco 
 to the proceedings was but preliminary, and that 
 the consent of Madrid would be necessary to 
 complete the bargain. This the American com- 
 missioners declared to be unsatisfactory and 
 wrong, and in their direct fashion presented 
 thirteen articles of surrender to Toral for his ac- 
 ceptance or rejection. But no such direct methods 
 were in Toral's mind; and in the flood of talk 
 that followed, the American commissioners 
 were so swaiaped from the plain ground of 
 solid fact that they actually agreed to proceed 
 to the consideration of the preliminaries, leaving 
 open the question of whether or not the Spanish 
 
240 The Fall of Santiae:o. 
 
 o" 
 
 forces had surrenclerecl. On this undefined 
 basis the discussion of the thirteen articles was 
 proceeded with, much to the enjoyment of the 
 voluble Spaniards and the growing impatienco 
 of the Americans. 
 
 At length when midnight was passed and n, 
 crystallization of result seemed as far off as ever. 
 General Wheeler insisted on a test of honafdes, 
 and the articles were taken up seriatim and each 
 was dealt with until it was accepted. When all 
 had been thus declared satisfactory, Wheeler 
 further insisted that the Spanish commissioners 
 should a£Bx their signatures to the articles and 
 this, much against their will they did, in the early 
 morning hours of July 15. But satisfactory as 
 this was, back of it all remained the unpleasant 
 fact that nothing was concluded. Toral had in- 
 sisted that everything was preliminary and sub- 
 ject to orders from Madrid, and Toral carried the 
 day. There was no apprehension, however, on 
 the American side as to the outcome, and the con- 
 cession to Toral's dignity was not regarded as 
 calculated to jeopardize the result. Next day the 
 atmosphere was cleared up by the receipt of a 
 dispatch from Toral saying that his government 
 had "authorized him to capitulate." This one 
 phrase was intelligible both in its original Span- 
 ish and in the unique translation which lies in 
 
The Fall of San-tiago. 24:1 
 
 the archives of the "War Department, but the rest 
 of it was a mystery. The document reads as 
 follows : 
 
 "Santiago de Cuba, July IG. 
 "To His Excellency, Commander-in-Chief of 
 the American Forces. 
 
 "Excellent Sir : lam now authorized by my 
 government to capitulate. 
 
 "I have the honor to so apprise you, and re- 
 questing you that you designate hour and place 
 where my representatives shall appear to compare 
 with those of Your Excellency to effect the arti- 
 cles of capitulation on the basis of what has been 
 agreed upon to this date in due time. 
 
 "I wish to manifest my desire to know the 
 resolutions of the United States Government 
 respecting the return of army, so as to note on 
 the capitulation, also the great courtesy of Your 
 Great Graces and return for their great gener- 
 osity and impulse for the Spanish soldiers, and 
 allow them to return to the Peninsula with the 
 honors the American army do them, the honor to 
 acknowledge as dutifully descended. 
 
 "Jose Toral, 
 "General Commanding Fourth Army Corps. 
 "(Signed) "General Shafter, 
 "Commanding American Forces." 
 
 "Whether it was during the many conferences 
 in which interpreters of varying degrees of inac- 
 curacy were employed as the medium of inform- 
 
242 The Fall of Santiago. 
 
 iug one side wliat the other side said; whether 
 neither side quite understood the literal import 
 of the various dispatches of demand and evasion; 
 •which of these conditions lies as the cause of the 
 result, this amazing fact remains that when Toral 
 surrendered, our leaders found that he had not 
 only consented to a capitulation of the city of 
 Santiago and its army, but that he intended to 
 give up what was practically the whole of East- 
 ern Cuba and its armies. Miles has stated that 
 he was surprised. And so was indeed every 
 member of the commission, but each man kept 
 silence with the imperturbability of a practiced 
 poker-player whose bluff had not been called. 
 The terms of Toral's capitulation, in brief were 
 these : 
 
 "Surrender of all Spanish forces in that part 
 of Santiago Province which lies east of a straight 
 line drawn from Aceradores, on the south coast, 
 to Dos Palmas, in the interior, and thence to 
 Sagua de Tanamo, on the north coast; estimated 
 at nearly twenty-five thousand men, of which 
 number twelve thousand had not been engaged. 
 
 "Surrender of all war material then in the de- 
 scribed district. All artillery and batteries at 
 the harbor entrance and gunboat in harbor to be 
 left intact. 
 
 "Officers to retain their side arms and personal 
 property. 
 
The Fall of Santiago. 243 
 
 "Privates to jj;ive up their arms of all kiiuls 
 and retain their personal property only. 
 
 "Toral authorized to take away the military 
 archives belongiiiii to the described district. 
 
 "The United States to transport all the sur- 
 rendered troops back to Spain as soon as possible, 
 embarking them near the garrisons they then 
 occupied. 
 
 "The volunteer and guerrilla forces allowed 
 to remain in Cuba, if they wish, under parole, 
 during the present war. 
 
 "Toral's army to march out of Santiago with 
 honors of war, depositing their arms at a point 
 mutually agreed upon, to await disposition of 
 United States Government, our commissioners 
 recommending that they be returned to the 
 soldiers. 
 
 "The existing municipal authorities to con- 
 tinue in control of the garrison cities until the 
 Spanish troops were embarked. 
 
 "Minos and torpedoes at mouth of Santiago 
 Harbor to be removed by Spanish. 
 
 "No Cubans to be allowed to enter Santiago 
 until after evacuation. 
 
 "Eefugees from Santiago to be allowed to 
 return to their homes. 
 
 "Miss Clara Barton and Red Cross agents to 
 be allowed to enter the city." 
 
 The time of surrender was fixed at 9 o'clock 
 of the morning of July 17. At that hour Gen- 
 erals Shafter, Lawton, Wheeler, Kent and Hines, 
 accompanied by their staffs and escorted by 
 
244 The Fall of Santiago. 
 
 &" 
 
 cavalry and infantiT detacbments went at an easy 
 pace down the winding road from San Juan hill 
 to the famous cieba tree, and sent an aid to the 
 Spanish lines to notify General Toral that Shafter 
 was ready to receive the surrender of Santiago. 
 Toral, white-haired and sad-faced, almost in- 
 stantly appeared with his staff and about a hun- 
 dred picked men and came loping up the road. 
 As the two commanders neared, the trumpeters 
 on both sides saluted with flourishes, while from 
 a Spanish battery a salute was fired and from our 
 troops lined up along the trenches there w'eut a 
 stalwart American cheer. Toral unbuckled his 
 sword and saluting, handed it to Shafter saying : 
 
 "Hago entrega al General Shafter, del ejercito 
 Americano, la ciudad y fortalejas de la ciudad 
 de Santiago." 
 
 ("I make over to General Shafter, Commander 
 of the American Army, the citadel and fortifica- 
 tions of the City of Santiago.") 
 
 To this Shafter replied: "I receive the city in 
 the name of the Government of the United 
 
 States." 
 
 With this acceptance, however, Toral's sword 
 was handed back to him and then with a clatter 
 of hoofs and a rattle of American scabbards 
 
The Fall of Santiago. 245 
 
 Shafter and Toral rode side by side into the city 
 at the head of their dual escort. At its entrance 
 the civil authorities and church dignitaries in 
 their glistening vestments came forward to meet 
 conquered and conquerors. Along the ill-paved 
 streets, and past the yellow-walled houses, the 
 procession passed until the Plaza de la Eeina 
 was reached. On one side rose the Mauresque 
 Palace, on the other the great cathedral, and on 
 the other two the broad-verandaed clubhouse 
 of San Carlos and the Cafe de la Venus. Stretch- 
 ing from side to side of the Plaza was a long blue 
 line of the Ninth Infantry and a picked troop of 
 the Second Cavalry. "Well to the front was the 
 Sixth Cavalry Band ; massed on the flagging be- 
 fore the palace were Shafter and his retinue. 
 
 As the cathedral clock struck twelve every eye 
 was turned to the red-tiled roof of the palace, 
 from the flagpole of which streamed out the yel- 
 low and crimson flag of Spain, but before the last 
 stroke of noon that standard came fluttering 
 down, never to be again raised, and in its place 
 ran up the brilliant folds of the Stars and Stripes. 
 As the full standard broke out in the breeze the 
 troops came to order arms; the cavalry band 
 broke into the "Star Spangled Banner;" there 
 was a faint cheer from the wondering people who 
 pressed against the Plaza rails and crowded to 
 
246 The Fall of Santiago. 
 
 the barred windows of the houses; while from 
 the Araerican lines drifted in the distant boom of 
 Capron's saluting batteries and the muffled roar 
 of our cheering troops. 
 Santiago had fallen. 
 
 THE END. 
 
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