Notes of a War Correspondent..........................................................................................................................1

Richard Harding Davis............................................................................................................................1

THE CUBANSPANISH WAR: THE DEATH OF RODRIGUEZ {1} ...............................................1

THE GREEKTURKISH WAR: THE BATTLE OF VELESTINOS {2}............................................5

The Spanish American War ...................................................................................................................11

ITHE ROUGH RIDERS AT GUASIMAS.......................................................................................11

IITHE BATTLE OF SAN JUAN HILL ............................................................................................20

IIITHE TAKING OF COAMO .........................................................................................................26

IVTHE PASSING OF SAN JUAN HILL .........................................................................................29

THE SOUTH AFRICAN WAR .............................................................................................................35

IWITH BULLER'S COLUMN.........................................................................................................35

IITHE RELIEF OF LADYSMITH...................................................................................................41

IIITHE NIGHT BEFORE THE BATTLE........................................................................................48

THE JAPANESERUSSIAN WAR: BATTLES I DID NOT SEE.....................................................55

A WAR CORRESPONDENT'S KIT....................................................................................................61

Adolfo Rodriguez was the only son of a Cuban farmer, who lived nine miles outside of Santa Clara, beyond

When the revolution in Cuba broke out young Rodriguez joined the insurgents, leaving his father and mother

and two sisters at the farm. He was taken, in December of 1896, by a force of the Guardia Civile, the corps

d'elite of the Spanish army, and defended himself when they tried to capture him, wounding three of them

He was tried by a military court for bearing arms against the government, and sentenced to be shot by a

Previous to execution he was confined in the military prison of Santa Clara with thirty other insurgents, all of

whom were sentenced to be shot, one after the other, on mornings following the execution of Rodriguez.

His execution took place the morning of the 19th of January, 1897, at a place a halfmile distant from the

city, on the great plain that stretches from the forts out to the hills, beyond which Rodriguez had lived for

I witnessed his execution, and what follows is an account of the way he went to his death. The young man's

friends could not be present, for it was impossible for them to show themselves in that crowd and that place

with wisdom or without distress, and I like to think that, although Rodriguez could not know it, there was one

person present when he died who felt keenly for him, and who was a sympathetic though unwilling spectator.

There had been a full moon the night preceding the execution, and when the squad of soldiers marched from

town it was still shining brightly through the mists. It lighted a plain two miles in extent, broken by ridges

and gullies and covered with thick, high grass, and with bunches of cactus and palmetto. In the hollow of the

ridges the mist lay like broad lakes of water, and on one side of the plain stood the walls of the old town. On

the other rose hills covered with royal palms that showed white in the moonlight, like hundreds of marble

columns. A line of tiny campfires that the sentries had built during the night stretched between the forts at

But as the light grew stronger and the moonlight faded these were stamped out, and when the soldiers came

in force the moon was a white ball in the sky, without radiance, the fires had sunk to ashes, and the sun had

So even when the men were formed into three sides of a hollow square, they were scarcely able to distinguish

There were about three hundred soldiers in the formation. They belonged to the volunteers, and they

deployed upon the plain with their band in front playing a jaunty quickstep, while their officers galloped from

one side to the other through the grass, seeking a suitable place for the execution. Outside the line the band

A few men and boys, who had been dragged out of their beds by the music, moved about the ridges behind

the soldiers, halfclothed, unshaven, sleepyeyed, yawning, stretching themselves nervously and shivering in

Either owing to discipline or on account of the nature of their errand, or because the men were still but half

awake, there was no talking in the ranks, and the soldiers stood motionless, leaning on their rifles, with their

The men in the crowd behind them were also grimly silent. They knew that whatever they might say would

be twisted into a word of sympathy for the condemned man or a protest against the government. So no one

spoke; even the officers gave their orders in gruff whispers, and the men in the crowd did not mix together,

As the light increased a mass of people came hurrying from the town with two black figures leading them,

and the soldiers drew up at attention, and part of the double line fell back and left an opening in the square.

With us a condemned man walks only the short distance from his cell to the scaffold or the electric chair,

shielded from sight by the prison walls, and it often occurs even then that the short journey is too much for

But the Spaniards on this morning made the prisoner walk for over a halfmile across the broken surface of

the fields. I expected to find the man, no matter what his strength at other times might be, stumbling and

faltering on this cruel journey; but as he came nearer I saw that he led all the others, that the priests on either

side of him were taking two steps to his one, and that they were tripping on their gowns and stumbling over

the hollows in their efforts to keep pace with him as he walked, erect and soldierly, at a quick step in advance

He had a handsome, gentle face of the peasant type, a light, pointed beard, great wistful eyes, and a mass of

curly black hair. He was shockingly young for such a sacrifice, and looked more like a Neapolitan than a

Cuban. You could imagine him sitting on the quay at Naples or Genoa lolling in the sun and showing his

white teeth when he laughed. Around his neck, hanging outside his linen blouse, he wore a new scapular.

It seems a petty thing to have been pleased with at such a time, but I confess to have felt a thrill of

satisfaction when I saw, as the Cuban passed me, that he held a cigarette between his lips, not arrogantly nor

with bravado, but with the nonchalance of a man who meets his punishment fearlessly, and who will let his

It was very quickly finished, with rough and, but for one frightful blunder, with merciful swiftness. The

crowd fell back when it came to the square, and the condemned man, the priests, and the firing squad of six

The officer who had held the cord that bound the Cuban's arms behind him and passed across his breast, let it

fall on the grass and drew his sword, and Rodriguez dropped his cigarette from his lips and bent and kissed

The elder of the priests moved to one side and prayed rapidly in a loud whisper, while the other, a younger

man, walked behind the firing squad and covered his face with his hands. They had both spent the last twelve

The Cuban walked to where the officer directed him to stand, and turning his back on the square, faced the

As the officer gave the first command he straightened himself as far as the cords would allow, and held up his

head and fixed his eyes immovably on the morning light, which had just begun to show above the hills.

He made a picture of such pathetic helplessness, but of such courage and dignity, that he reminded me on the

instant of that statue of Nathan Hale which stands in the City Hall Park, above the roar of Broadway. The

Cuban's arms were bound, as are those of the statue, and he stood firmly, with his weight resting on his heels

like a soldier on parade, and with his face held up fearlessly, as is that of the statue. But there was this

difference, that Rodriguez, while probably as willing to give six lives for his country as was the American

rebel, being only a peasant, did not think to say so, and he will not, in consequence, live in bronze during the

lives of many men, but will be remembered only as one of thirty Cubans, one of whom was shot at Santa

The officer had given the order, the men had raised their pieces, and the condemned man had heard the clicks

of the triggers as they were pulled back, and he had not moved. And then happened one of the most cruelly

refined, though unintentional, acts of torture that one can very well imagine. As the officer slowly raised his

sword, preparatory to giving the signal, one of the mounted officers rode up to him and pointed out silently

that, as I had already observed with some satisfaction, the firing squad were so placed that when they fired

they would shoot several of the soldiers stationed on the extreme end of the square.

Their captain motioned his men to lower their pieces, and then walked across the grass and laid his hand on

It is not pleasant to think what that shock must have been. The man had steeled himself to receive a volley of

bullets. He believed that in the next instant he would be in another world; he had heard the command given,

had heard the click of the Mausers as the locks caughtand then, at that supreme moment, a human hand

You would expect that any man, snatched back to life in such a fashion would start and tremble at the

reprieve, or would break down altogether, but this boy turned his head steadily, and followed with his eyes

the direction of the officer's sword, then nodded gravely, and, with his shoulders squared, took up the new

As an exhibition of selfcontrol this should surely rank above feats of heroism performed in battle, where

there are thousands of comrades to give inspiration. This man was alone, in sight of the hills he knew, with

only enemies about him, with no source to draw on for strength but that which lay within himself.

The officer of the firing squad, mortified by his blunder, hastily whipped up his sword, the men once more

levelled their rifles, the sword rose, dropped, and the men fired. At the report the Cuban's head snapped back

almost between his shoulders, but his body fell slowly, as though some one had pushed him gently forward

He sank on his side in the wet grass without a struggle or sound, and did not move again.

It was difficult to believe that he meant to lie there, that it could be ended so without a word, that the man in

the linen suit would not rise to his feet and continue to walk on over the hills, as he apparently had started to

do, to his home; that there was not a mistake somewhere, or that at least some one would be sorry or say

But, fortunately, he did not need help, and the priests returnedthe younger one with the tears running down

his faceand donned their vestments and read a brief requiem for his soul, while the squad stood uncovered,

and the men in hollow square shook their accoutrements into place, and shifted their pieces and got ready for

the order to march, and the band began again with the same quickstep which the fusillade had interrupted.

The figure still lay on the grass untouched, and no one seemed to remember that it had walked there of itself,

or noticed that the cigarette still burned, a tiny ring of living fire, at the place where the figure had first stood.

The figure was a thing of the past, and the squad shook itself like a great snake, and then broke into little

pieces and started off jauntily, stumbling in the high grass and striving to keep step to the music.

The officers led it past the figure in the linen suit, and so close to it that the file closers had to part with the

column to avoid treading on it. Each soldier as he passed turned and looked down on it, some craning their

necks curiously, others giving a careless glance, and some without any interest at all, as they would have

One young soldier caught his foot in a trailing vine, just opposite to it, and fell. He grew very red when his

comrades giggled at him for his awkwardness. The crowd of sleepy spectators fell in on either side of the

band. They, too, had forgotten it, and the priests put their vestments back in the bag and wrapped their heavy

Every one seemed to have forgotten it except two men, who came slowly towards it from the town, driving a

bullockcart that bore an unplaned coffin, each with a cigarette between his lips, and with his throat wrapped

At that moment the sun, which had shown some promise of its coming in the glow above the hills, shot up

suddenly from behind them in all the splendor of the tropics, a fierce, red disk of heat, and filled the air with

The bayonets of the retreating column flashed in it, and at the sight a rooster in a farmyard near by crowed

vigorously, and a dozen bugles answered the challenge with the brisk, cheery notes of the reveille, and from

all parts of the city the church bells jangled out the call for early mass, and the little world of Santa Clara

But as I fell in at the rear of the procession and looked back, the figure of the young Cuban, who was no

longer a part of the world of Santa Clara, was asleep in the wet grass, with his motionless arms still tightly

bound behind him, with the scapular twisted awry across his face, and the blood from his breast sinking into

The Turks had made three attacks on Velestinos on three different days, and each time had been repulsed. A

week later, on the 4th of May, they came back again, to the number of ten thousand, and brought four

batteries with them, and the fighting continued for two more days. This was called the second battle of

Velestinos. In the afternoon of the 5th the Crown Prince withdrew from Pharsala to take up a stronger

position at Domokos, and the Greeks under General Smolenski, the military hero of the campaign, were

forced to retreat, and the Turks came in, and, according to their quaint custom, burned the village and

marched on to Volo. John Bass, the American correspondent, and myself were keeping house in the village,

in the home of the mayor. He had fled from the town, as had nearly all the villagers; and as we liked the

appearance of his house, I gave Bass a leg up over the wall around his garden, and Bass opened the gate, and

we climbed in through his front window. It was like the invasion of the home of the Dusantes by Mrs. Lecks

and Mrs. Aleshine, and, like them, we were constantly making discoveries of fresh treasuretrove.

Sometimes it was in the form of a cake of soap or a tin of coffee, and once it was the mayor's fluted

petticoats, which we tried on, and found very heavy. We could not discover what he did for pockets. All of

these things, and the house itself, were burned to ashes, we were told, a few hours after we retreated, and we

On the morning of the 4th we were awakened by the firing of cannon from a hill just over our heads, and we

met in the middle of the room and solemnly shook hands. There was to be a battle, and we were the only

correspondents on the spot. As I represented the London Times, Bass was the only representative of an

We found all the hills to the left of the town topped with long lines of men crouching in little trenches. There

were four rows of hills. If you had measured the distance from one hilltop to the next, they would have been

from one hundred to three hundred yards distant from one another. In between the hills were gullies, or little

valleys, and the beds of streams that had dried up in the hot sun. These valleys were filled with high grass that

waved about in the breeze and was occasionally torn up and tossed in the air by a shell. The position of the

Greek forces was very simple. On the top of each hill was a trench two or three feet deep and some hundred

yards long. The earth that had been scooped out to make the trench was packed on the edge facing the enemy,

and on the top of that some of the men had piled stones, through which they poked their rifles. When a shell

struck the ridge it would sometimes scatter these stones in among the men, and they did quite as much

damage as the shells. Back of these trenches, and down that side of the hill which was farther from the

enemy, were the reserves, who sprawled at length in the long grass, and smoked and talked and watched the

The battle, which lasted two days, opened in a sudden and terrific storm of hail. But the storm passed as

quickly as it came, leaving the trenches running with water, like the gutters of a city street after a spring

shower; and the men soon sopped them up with their overcoats and blankets, and in half an hour the sun had

dried the wet uniforms, and the fieldbirds had begun to chirp again, and the grass was warm and fragrant.

The sun was terribly hot. There was no other day during that entire brief campaign when its glare was so

intense or the heat so suffocating. The men curled up in the trenches, with their heads pressed against the

damp earth, panting and breathing heavily, and the heatwaves danced and quivered about them, making the

From time to time an officer would rise and peer down into the great plain, shading his eyes with his hands,

and shout something at them, and they would turn quickly in the trench and rise on one knee. And at the

shout that followed they would fire four or five rounds rapidly and evenly, and then, at a sound from the

officer's whistle, would drop back again and pick up the cigarettes they had placed in the grass and begin

leisurely to swab out their rifles with a piece of dirty rag on a cleaning rod. Down in the plain below there

was apparently nothing at which they could shoot except the great shadows of the clouds drifting across the

vast checkerboard of green and yellow fields, and disappearing finally between the mountain passes beyond.

In some places there were square dark patches that might have been bushes, and nearer to us than these were

long lines of fresh earth, from which steam seemed to be escaping in little wisps. What impressed us most of

what we could see of the battle then was the remarkable number of cartridges the Greek soldiers wasted in

firing into space, and the fact that they had begun to fire at such long range that, in order to get the elevation,

they had placed the rifle butt under the armpit instead of against the shoulder. Their sights were at the top

notch. The cartridges reminded one of corn cobs jumping out of a cornsheller, and it was interesting when

the bolts were shot back to see a hundred of them pop up into the air at the same time, flashing in the sun as

though they were glad to have done their work and to get out again. They rolled by the dozens underfoot, and

twinkled in the grass, and when one shifted his position in the narrow trench, or stretched his cramped legs,

Then there began a concert which came from just overheada concert of jarring sounds and little whispers.

The "shrieking shrapnel," of which one reads in the description of every battle, did not seem so much like a

shriek as it did like the jarring sound of telegraph wires when some one strikes the pole from which they

hang, and when they came very close the noise was like the rushing sound that rises between two railroad

trains when they pass each other in opposite directions and at great speed. After a few hours we learned by

observation that when a shell sang overhead it had already struck somewhere else, which was comforting,

and which was explained, of course, by the fact that the speed of the shell is so much greater than the rate at

which sound travels. The bullets were much more disturbing; they seemed to be less open in their warfare,

and to steal up and sneak by, leaving no sign, and only to whisper as they passed. They moved under a cloak

of invisibility, and made one feel as though he were the blind man in a game of blindman'sbuff, where

every one tapped him in passing, leaving him puzzled and ignorant as to whither they had gone and from

what point they would come next. The bullets sounded like rustling silk, or like hummingbirds on a warm

summer's day, or like the wind as it is imitated on the stage of a theatre. Any one who has stood behind the

scenes when a storm is progressing on the stage, knows the little wheel wound with silk that brushes against

another piece of silk, and which produces the whistling effect of the wind. At Velestinos, when the firing was

very heavy, it was exactly as though some one were turning one of these silk wheels, and so rapidly as to

When this concert opened, the officers shouted out new orders, and each of the men shoved his sight nearer to

the barrel, and when he fired again, rubbed the butt of his gun snugly against his shoulder. The huge green

blotches on the plain had turned blue, and now we could distinguish that they moved, and that they were

moving steadily forward. Then they would cease to move, and a little later would be hidden behind great

puffs of white smoke, which were followed by a flash of flame; and still later there would come a dull report.

At the same instant something would hurl itself jarring through the air above our heads, and by turning on

one elbow we could see a sudden upheaval in the sunny landscape behind us, a spurt of earth and stones like

a miniature geyser, which was filled with broken branches and tufts of grass and pieces of rock. As the

Turkish aim grew better these volcanoes appeared higher up the hill, creeping nearer and nearer to the

rampart of fresh earth on the second trench until the shells hammered it at last again and again, sweeping it

away and cutting great gashes in it, through which we saw the figures of men caught up and hurled to one

side, and others flinging themselves face downward as though they were diving into water; and at the same

instant in our own trench the men would gasp as though they had been struck too, and then becoming

conscious of having done this would turn and smile sheepishly at each other, and crawl closer into the

From where we sat on the edge of the trench, with our feet among the cartridges, we could, by leaning

forward, look over the piledup earth into the plain below, and soon, without any aid from field glasses, we

saw the blocks of blue break up into groups of men. These men came across the ploughed fields in long,

widely opened lines, walking easily and leisurely, as though they were playing golf or sowing seed in the

The Greek rifles crackled and flashed at the lines, but the men below came on quite steadily, picking their

way over the furrows and appearing utterly unconscious of the seven thousand rifles that were calling on

them to halt. They were advancing directly toward a little sugarloaf hill, on the top of which was a mountain

battery perched like a tiara on a woman's head. It was throwing one shell after another in the very path of the

men below, but the Turks still continued to pick their way across the field, without showing any regard for

the mountain battery. It was worse than threatening; it seemed almost as though they meant to insult us. If

they had come up on a run they would not have appeared so contemptuous, for it would have looked then as

though they were trying to escape the Greek fire, or that they were at least interested in what was going

forward. But the steady advance of so many men, each plodding along by himself, with his head bowed and

There was a little village at the foot of the hill. It was so small that no one had considered it. It was more like

a collection of stables gathered round a residence than a town, and there was a wall completely encircling it,

with a gate in the wall that faced us. Suddenly the doors of this gate were burst open from the inside, and a

man in a fez ran through them, followed by many more. The first man was waving a sword, and a peasant in

petticoats ran at his side and pointed up with his hand at our trench. Until that moment the battle had lacked

all human interest; we might have been watching a fight against the stars or the man in the moon, and, in

spite of the noise and clatter of the Greek rifles, and the ghostlike whispers and the rushing sounds in the air,

there was nothing to remind us of any other battle of which we had heard or read. But we had seen pictures of

officers waving swords, and we knew that the fez was the sign of the Turkof the enemyof the men who

were invading Thessaly, who were at that moment planning to come up a steep hill on which we happened to

be sitting and attack the people on top of it. And the spectacle at once became comprehensible, and took on

the human interest it had lacked. The men seemed to feel this, for they sprang up and began cheering and

shouting, and fired in an upright position, and by so doing exposed themselves at full length to the fire from

the men below. The Turks in front of the village ran back into it again, and those in the fields beyond turned

and began to move away, but in that same plodding, aggravating fashion. They moved so leisurely that there

was a pause in the noise along the line, while the men watched them to make sure that they were really

retreating. And then there was a long cheer, after which they all sat down, breathing deeply, and wiping the

The different trenches were not all engaged at the same time. They acted according to the individual

judgment of their commanding officer, but always for the general good. Sometimes the fire of the enemy

would be directed on one particular trench, and it would be impossible for the men in that trench to rise and

reply without haying their heads carried away; so they would lie hidden, and the men in the trenches flanking

them would act in their behalf, and rake the enemy from the front and from every side, until the fire on that

trench was silenced, or turned upon some other point. The trenches stretched for over half a mile in a

semicircle, and the little hills over which they ran lay at so many different angles, and rose to such different

heights, that sometimes the men in one trench fired directly over the heads of their own men. From many

trenches in the first line it was impossible to see any of the Greek soldiers except those immediately beside

you. If you looked back or beyond on either hand there was nothing to be seen but high hills topped with

General Smolenski directed the Greeks from the plain to the far right of the town; and his presence there,

although none of the men saw nor heard of him directly throughout the entire day, was more potent for good

than would have been the presence of five thousand other men held in reserve. He was a mile or two miles

away from the trenches, but the fact that he was there, and that it was Smolenski who was giving the orders,

was enough. Few had ever seen Smolenski, but his name was sufficient; it was as effective as is Mr. Bowen's

name on a Bank of England note. It gave one a pleasant feeling to know that he was somewhere within call;

you felt there would be no "routs" nor stampedes while he was there. And so for two days those seven

thousand men lay in the trenches, repulsing attack after attack of the Turkish troops, suffocated with the heat

and chilled with sudden showers, and swept unceasingly by shells and bulletspartly because they happened

to be good men and brave men, but largely because they knew that somewhere behind them a stout,

bullnecked soldier was sitting on a campstool, watching them through a pair of field glasses.

Toward midday you would see a man leave the trench with a comrade's arm around him, and start on the

long walk to the town where the hospital corps were waiting for him. These men did not wear their wounds

with either pride or braggadocio, but regarded the wet sleeves and shapeless arms in a sort of wondering

surprise. There was much more of surprise than of pain in their faces, and they seemed to be puzzling as to

Other men were carried out of the trench and laid on their backs on the high grass, staring up drunkenly at the

glaring sun, and with their limbs fallen into unfamiliar poses. They lay so still, and they were so utterly

oblivious of the roar and rattle and the anxious energy around them that one grew rather afraid of them and of

their superiority to their surroundings. The sun beat on them, and the insects in the grass waving above them

buzzed and hummed, or burrowed in the warm moist earth upon which they lay; over their heads the invisible

carriers of death jarred the air with shrill crescendoes, and near them a comrade sat hacking with his bayonet

at a lump of hard bread. He sprawled contentedly in the hot sun, with humped shoulders and legs far apart,

and with his cap tipped far over his eyes. Every now and again he would pause, with a piece of cheese

balanced on the end of his knifeblade, and look at the twisted figures by him on the grass, or he would

dodge involuntarily as a shell swung low above his head, and smile nervously at the still forms on either side

of him that had not moved. Then he brushed the crumbs from his jacket and took a drink out of his hot

canteen, and looking again at the sleeping figures pressing down the long grass beside him, crawled back on

The dead gave dignity to what the other men were doing, and made it noble, and, from another point of view,

quite senseless. For their dying had proved nothing. Men who could have been much better spared than they,

were still alive in the trenches, and for no reason but through mere dumb chance. There was no selection of

the unfittest; it seemed to be ruled by unreasoning luck. A certain number of shells and bullets passed through

a certain area of space, and men of different bulks blocked that space in different places. If a man happened

to be standing in the line of a bullet he was killed and passed into eternity, leaving a wife and children,

perhaps, to mourn him. "Father died," these children will say, "doing his duty." As a matter of fact, father

died because he happened to stand up at the wrong moment, or because he turned to ask the man on his right

for a match, instead of leaning toward the left, and he projected his bulk of two hundred pounds where a

bullet, fired by a man who did not know him and who had not aimed at him, happened to want the right of

way. One of the two had to give it, and as the bullet would not, the soldier had his heart torn out. The man

who sat next to me happened to stoop to fill his cartridgebox just as the bullet that wanted the space he had

occupied passed over his bent shoulder; and so he was not killed, but will live for sixty years, perhaps, and

will do much good or much evil. Another man in the same trench sat up to clean his rifle, and had his arm in

the air driving the cleaning rod down the barrel, when a bullet passed through his lungs, and the gun fell

across his face, with the rod sticking in it, and he pitched forward on his shoulder quite dead. If he had not

cleaned his gun at that moment he would probably be alive in Athens now, sitting in front of a cafe and

fighting the war over again. Viewed from that point, and leaving out the fact that God ordered it all, the

fortunes of the game of war seemed as capricious as matching pennies, and as impersonal as the wheel at

Monte Carlo. In it the brave man did not win because he was brave, but because he was lucky. A fool and a

philosopher are equal at a game of dice. And these men who threw dice with death were interesting to watch,

because, though they gambled for so great a stake, they did so unconcernedly and without flinching, and

There was a redheaded, freckled peasant boy, in dirty petticoats, who guided Bass and myself to the

trenches. He was one of the few peasants who had not run away, and as he had driven sheep over every foot

of the hills, he was able to guide the soldiers through those places where they were best protected from the

bullets of the enemy. He did this all day, and was always, whether coming or going, under a heavy fire; but

he enjoyed that fact, and he seemed to regard the battle only as a delightful change in the quiet routine of his

life, as one of our own country boys at home would regard the coming of the spring circus or the burning of a

neighbor's barn. He ran dancing ahead of us, pointing to where a ledge of rock offered a natural shelter, or

showing us a steep gully where the bullets could not fall. When they came very near him he would jump high

in the air, not because he was startled, but out of pure animal joy in the excitement of it, and he would frown

importantly and shake his red curls at us, as though to say: "I told you to be careful. Now, you see. Don't let

that happen again." We met him many times during the two days, escorting different companies of soldiers

from one point to another, as though they were visitors to his estate. When a shell broke, he would pick up a

piece and present it to the officer in charge, as though it were a flower he had plucked from his own garden,

and which he wanted his guest to carry away with him as a souvenir of his visit. Some one asked the boy if

his father and mother knew where he was, and he replied, with amusement, that they had run away and

deserted him, and that he had remained because he wished to see what a Turkish army looked like. He was a

much more plucky boy than the overrated Casabianca, who may have stood on the burning deck whence all

but him had fled because he could not swim, and because it was with him a choice of being either burned or

drowned. This boy stuck to the burning deck when it was possible for him at any time to have walked away

and left it burning. But he stayed on because he was amused, and because he was able to help the soldiers

from the city in safety across his native heath. He was much the best part of the show, and one of the bravest

Greeks on the field. He will grow up to be something fine, no doubt, and his spirit will rebel against having to

spend his life watching his father's sheep. He may even win the race from Marathon.

Another Greek who was a most interesting figure to us was a Lieutenant Ambroise Frantzis. He was in

command of the mountain battery on the flat, round top of the high hill. On account of its height the place

seemed much nearer to the sun than any other part of the world, and the heat there was three times as fierce as

in the trenches below. When you had climbed to the top of this hill it was like standing on a roofgarden, or

as though you were watching a naval battle from a fighting top of one of the battleships. The top of the hill

was not unlike an immense circus ring in appearance. The piledup earth around its circular edge gave that

impression, and the glaring yellow wheat that was tramped into glaring yellow soil, and the blue

ammunitionboxes scattered about, helped out the illusion. It was an exceedingly busy place, and the smoke

drifted across it continually, hiding us from one another in a curtain of flying yellow dust, while over our

heads the Turkish shells raced after each other so rapidly that they beat out the air like the branches of a tree

in a storm. On account of its height, and the glaring heat, and the shells passing, and the Greek guns going off

and then turning somersaults, it was not a place suited for meditation; but Ambroise Frantzis meditated there

as though he were in his own study. He was a very young man and very shy, and he was too busy to consider

his own safety, or to take time, as the others did, to show that he was not considering it. Some of the other

officers stood up on the breastworks and called the attention of the men to what they were doing; but as they

did not wish the men to follow their example in this, it was difficult to see what they expected to gain by their

braggadocio. Frantzis was as unconcerned as an artist painting a big picture in his studio. The battle plain

below him was his canvas, and his nine mountain guns were his paint brushes. And he painted out Turks and

Turkish cannon with the same concentrated, serious expression of countenance that you see on the face of an

artist when he bites one brush between his lips and with another wipes out a false line or a touch of the wrong

color. You have seen an artist cock his head on one side, and shut one eye and frown at his canvas, and then

select several brushes and mix different colors and hit the canvas a bold stroke, and then lean back to note the

effect. Frantzis acted in just that way. He would stand with his legs apart and his head on one side, pulling

meditatively at his pointed beard, and then taking a closer look through his fieldglasses, would select the

three guns he had decided would give him the effect he wanted to produce, and he would produce that effect.

When the shot struck plump in the Turkish lines, and we could see the earth leap up into the air like geysers

of muddy water, and each gunner would wave his cap and cheer, Frantzis would only smile uncertainly, and

begin again, with the aid of his fieldglasses, to puzzle out fresh combinations.

The battle that had begun in a storm of hail ended on the first day in a storm of bullets that had been held in

reserve by the Turks, and which let off just after sundown. They came from a natural trench, formed by the

driedup bed of a stream which lay just below the hill on which the first Greek trench was situated. There

were bushes growing on the bank of the stream nearest to the Greek lines, and these hid the men who

occupied it. Throughout the day there had been an irritating fire from this trench from what appeared to be

not more than a dozen rifles, but we could see that it was fed from time to time with many boxes of

ammunition, which were carried to it on the backs of mules from the Turkish position a half mile farther to

the rear. Bass and a corporal took a great aversion to this little group of Turks, not because there were too

many of them to be disregarded, but because they were so near; and Bass kept the corporal's services engaged

in firing into it, and in discouraging the ammunition mules when they were being driven in that direction. Our

corporal was a sharpshooter, and, accordingly, felt his superiority to his comrades; and he had that cheerful

contempt for his officers that all true Greek soldiers enjoy; and so he never joined in the volley firing, but

kept his ammunition exclusively for the dozen men behind the bushes and for the mules. He waged, as it

were, a little battle on his own account. The other men rose as commanded and fired regular volleys, and sank

back again, but he fixed his sights to suit his own idea of the range, and he rose when he was ready to do so,

and fired whenever he thought best. When his officer, who kept curled up in the hollow of the trench,

commanded him to lie down, he would frown and shake his head at the interruption, and paid no further

attention to the order. He was as much alone as a hunter on a mountain peak stalking deer, and whenever he

fired at the men in the bushes he would swear softly, and when he fired at the mules he would chuckle and

laugh with delight and content. The mules had to cross a ploughed field in order to reach the bushes, and so

we were able to mark where his bullets struck, and we could see them skip across the field, kicking up the dirt

as they advanced, until they stopped the mule altogether, or frightened the man who was leading it into a

It appeared later that instead of there being but twelve men in these bushes there were six hundred, and that

they were hiding there until the sun set in order to make a final attack on the first trench. They had probably

argued that at sunset the strain of the day's work would have told on the Greek morale, that the men's nerves

would be jerking and their stomachs aching for food, and that they would be ready for darkness and sleep,

and in no condition to repulse a fresh and vigorous attack. So, just as the sun sank, and the officers were

counting the cost in dead and wounded, and the men were gathering up blankets and overcoats, and the firing

from the Greek lines had almost ceased, there came a fierce rattle from the trench to the right of us, like a

watchdog barking the alarm, and the others took it up from all over the hill, and when we looked down into

the plain below to learn what it meant, we saw it blue with men, who seemed to have sprung from the earth.

They were clambering from the bed of the stream, breaking through the bushes, and forming into a long line,

which, as soon as formed, was at once hidden at regular intervals by flashes of flame that seemed to leap

from one gunbarrel to the next, as you have seen a current of electricity run along a line of gas jets. In the

dim twilight these flashes were much more blinding than they had been in the glare of the sun, and the crash

of the artillery coming on top of the silence was the more fierce and terrible by the contrast. The Turks were

so close on us that the first trench could do little to help itself, and the men huddled against it while their

comrades on the surrounding hills fought for them, their volleys passing close above our heads, and meeting

the rush of the Turkish bullets on the way, so that there was now one continuous whistling shriek, like the

roar of the wind through the rigging of a ship in a storm. If a man had raised his arm above his head his hand

would have been torn off. It had come up so suddenly that it was like two dogs, each springing at the throat of

the other, and in a greater degree it had something of the sound of two wild animals struggling for life. Volley

answered volley as though with personal hateone crashing in upon the roll of the other, or beating it out of

recognition with the bursting roar of heavy cannon. At the same instant all of the Turkish batteries opened

with great, ponderous, booming explosions, and the little mountain guns barked and snarled and shrieked

back at them, and the rifle volleys crackled and shot out blistering flames, while the air was filled with

invisible express trains that shook and jarred it and crashed into one another, bursting and shrieking and

groaning. It seemed as though you were lying in a burning forest, with giant tree trunks that had withstood

the storms of centuries crashing and falling around your ears, and sending up great showers of sparks and

flame. This lasted for five minutes or less, and then the deathgrip seemed to relax, the volleys came

brokenly, like a man panting for breath, the bullets ceased to sound with the hiss of escaping steam, and

rustled aimlessly by, and from hilltop to hilltop the officers' whistles sounded as though a sportsman were

calling off his dogs. The Turks withdrew into the coming night, and the Greeks lay back, panting and

sweating, and stared openeyed at one another, like men who had looked for a moment into hell, and had

The next day was like the first, except that by five o'clock in the afternoon the Turks appeared on our left

flank, crawling across the hills like an invasion of great ants, and the Greek army that at Velestinos had made

the two best and most dignified stands of the war withdrew upon Halmyros, and the Turks poured into the

village and burned it, leaving nothing standing save two tall Turkish minarets that many years before, when

On the day the American troops landed on the coast of Cuba, the Cubans informed General Wheeler that the

enemy were intrenched at Guasimas, blocking the way to Santiago. Guasimas is not a village, nor even a

collection of houses; it is the meeting place of two trails which join at the apex of a V, three miles from the

seaport town of Siboney, and continue merged in a single trail to Santiago. General Wheeler, guided by the

Cubans, reconnoitred this trail on the 23rd of June, and with the position of the enemy fully explained to him,

returned to Siboney and informed General Young and Colonel Wood that on the following morning he would

attack the Spanish position at Guasimas. It has been stated that at Guasimas, the Rough Riders were trapped

in an ambush, but, as the plan was discussed while I was present, I know that so far from any ones running

into an ambush, every one of the officers concerned had a full knowledge of where he would find the enemy,

That night no one slept, for until two o'clock in the morning, troops were still being disembarked in the surf,

and two ships of war had their searchlights turned on the landingplace, and made Siboney as light as a

ballroom. Back of the searchlights was an ocean white with moonlight, and on the shore red campfires, at

which the half drowned troops were drying their uniforms, and the Rough Riders, who had just marched in

from Baiquiri, were cooking a late supper, or early breakfast of coffee and bacon. Below the former home of

the Spanish comandante, which General Wheeler had made his headquarters, lay the camp of the Rough

Riders, and through it Cuban officers were riding their halfstarved ponies, and scattering the ashes of the

campfires. Below them was the beach and the roaring surf, in which a thousand or so naked men were

assisting and impeding the progress shoreward of their comrades, in pontoons and shore boats, which were

It was one of the most weird and remarkable scenes of the war, probably of any war. An army was being

landed on an enemy's coast at the dead of night, but with the same cheers and shrieks and laughter that rise

from the bathers at Coney Island on a hot Sunday. It was a pandemonium of noises. The men still to be

landed from the "prison hulks," as they called the transports, were singing in chorus, the men already on

shore were dancing naked around the campfires on the beach, or shouting with delight as they plunged into

the first bath that had offered in seven days, and those in the launches as they were pitched headfirst at the

soil of Cuba, signalized their arrival by howls of triumph. On either side rose black overhanging ridges, in the

lowland between were white tents and burning fires, and from the ocean came the blazing, dazzling eyes of

After three hours' troubled sleep in this tumult the Rough Riders left camp at five in the morning. With the

exception of half a dozen officers they were dismounted, and carried their blanket rolls, haversacks,

ammunition, and carbines. General Young had already started toward Guasimas the First and Tenth

dismounted Cavalry, and according to the agreement of the night before had taken the eastern trail to our

right, while the Rough Riders climbed the steep ridge above Siboney and started toward the rendezvous along

the trail to the west, which was on high ground and a half mile to a mile distant from the trail along which

General Young and his regulars were marching. There was a valley between us, and the bushes were so thick

on both sides of our trail that it was not possible at any time, until we met at Guasimas, to distinguish the

As soon as the Rough Riders had reached the top of the ridge, not twenty minutes after they had left camp,

which was the first opportunity that presented itself, Colonel Wood ordered Captain Capron to proceed with

his troop in front of the column as an advance guard, and to choose a "point" of five men skilled as scouts and

trailers. Still in advance of these he placed two Cuban scouts. The column then continued along the trail in

single file. The Cubans were at a distance of two hundred and fifty yards; the "point" of five picked men

under Sergeant Byrne and dutySergeant Fish followed them at a distance of a hundred yards, and then came

Capron's troop of sixty men strung out in single file. No flankers were placed for the reason that the dense

undergrowth and the tangle of vines that stretched from the branches of the trees to the bushes below made it

a physical impossibility for man or beast to move forward except along the single trail.

Colonel Wood rode at the head of the column, followed by two regular army officers who were members of

General Wheeler's staff, a Cuban officer, and LieutenantColonel Roosevelt. They rode slowly in

consideration of the troopers on foot, who under a cruelly hot sun carried heavy burdens. To those who did

not have to walk, it was not unlike a hunting excursion in our West; the scenery was beautiful and the view

down the valley one of luxuriant peace. Roosevelt had never been in the tropics and Captain McCormick and

I were talking back at him over our shoulders and at each other, pointing out unfamiliar trees and birds.

Roosevelt thought it looked like a good deer country, as it once was; it reminded McCormick of Southern

California; it looked to me like the trails in Central America. We advanced, talking in that fashion and in high

spirits, and congratulating ourselves in being shut of the transport and on breathing fine mountain air again,

and on the fact that we were on horseback. We agreed it was impossible to appreciate that we were really at

warthat we were in the enemy's country. We had been riding in this pleasant fashion for an hour and a half

with brief halts for rest, when Wood stopped the head of the column, and rode down the trail to meet Capron,

who was coming back. Wood returned immediately, leading his horse, and said to Roosevelt:

The place at which we had halted was where the trail narrowed, and proceeded sharply downward. There was

on one side of it a stout barbedwire fence of five strands. By some fortunate accident this fence had been cut

just where the head of the column halted. On the left of the trail it shut off fields of high grass blocked at

every fifty yards with great barricades of undergrowth and tangled trees and chapparal. On the other side of

the trail there was not a foot of free ground; the bushes seemed absolutely impenetrable, as indeed they were

When we halted, the men sat down beside the trail and chewed the long blades of grass, or fanned the air with

their hats. They had no knowledge of the situation such as their leaders possessed, and their only emotion was

one of satisfaction at the chance the halt gave them to rest and to shift their packs. Wood again walked down

the trail with Capron and disappeared, and one of the officers informed us that the scouts had seen the

outposts of the enemy. It did not seem reasonable that the Spaniards, who had failed to attack us when we

landed at Baiquiri, would oppose us until they could do so in force, so, personally, I doubted that there were

any Spaniards nearer than Santiago. But we tied our horses to the wire fence, and Capron's troop knelt with

carbines at the "Ready," peering into the bushes. We must have waited there, while Wood reconnoitred, for

over ten minutes. Then he returned, and began deploying his troops out at either side of the trail. Capron he

sent on down the trail itself. G Troop was ordered to beat into the bushes on the right, and K and A were sent

over the ridge on which we stood down into the hollow to connect with General Young's column on the

opposite side of the valley. F and E Troops were deployed in skirmishline on the other side of the wire

fence. Wood had discovered the enemy a few hundred yards from where he expected to find him, and so far

from being "surprised," he had time, as I have just described, to get five of his troops into position before a

shot was fired. The firing, when it came, started suddenly on our right. It sounded so close that still

believing we were acting on a false alarm, and that there were no Spaniards ahead of usI guessed it was

Capron's men firing at random to disclose the enemy's position. I ran after G Troop under Captain Llewellyn,

and found them breaking their way through the bushes in the direction from which the volleys came. It was

like forcing the walls of a maze. If each trooper had not kept in touch with the man on either hand he would

have been lost in the thicket. At one moment the underbrush seemed swarming with our men, and the next,

except that you heard the twigs breaking, and heavy breathing or a crash as a vine pulled some one down,

there was not a sign of a human being anywhere. In a few minutes we broke through into a little open place in

front of a dark curtain of vines, and the men fell on one knee and began returning the fire that came from it.

The enemy's fire was exceedingly heavy, and his aim was excellent. We saw nothing of the Spaniards, except

a few on the ridge across the valley. I happened to be the only one present with field glasses, and when I

discovered this force on the ridge, and had made sure, by the cockades in their sombreros, that they were

Spaniards and not Cubans, I showed them to Roosevelt. He calculated they were five hundred yards from us,

and ordered the men to fire on them at that range. Through the two hours of fighting that followed, although

men were falling all around us, the Spaniards on the ridge were the only ones that many of us saw. But the

fire against us was not more than eighty yards away, and so hot that our men could only lie flat in the grass

and return it in that position. It was at this moment that our men believed they were being attacked by

Capron's troop, which they imagined must have swung to the right, and having lost its bearings and hearing

them advancing through the underbrush, had mistaken them for the enemy. They accordingly ceased firing

and began shouting in order to warn Capron that he was shooting at his friends. This is the foundation for the

statement that the Rough Riders had fired on each other, which they did not do then or at any other time.

Later we examined the relative position of the trail which Capron held, and the position of G Troop, and they

Capron could not possibly have fired into us at any time, unless he had turned directly around in his tracks

and aimed up the very trail he had just descended. Advancing, he could no more have hit us than he could

have seen us out of the back of his head. When we found many hundred spent cartridges of the Spaniards a

hundred yards in front of G Troop's position, the question as to who had fired on us was answered.

It was an exceedingly hot corner. The whole troop was gathered in the little open place blocked by the

network of grapevines and tangled bushes before it. They could not see twenty feet on three sides of them,

but on the right hand lay the valley, and across it came the sound of Young's brigade, who were apparently

heavily engaged. The enemy's fire was so close that the men could not hear the word of command, and

Captain Llewellyn and Lieutenant Greenway, unable to get their attention, ran among them, batting them

with their sombreros to make them cease firing. LieutenantColonel Roosevelt ran up just then, bringing with

him Lieutenant Woodbury Kane and ten troopers from K Troop. Roosevelt lay down in the grass beside

Llewellyn and consulted with him eagerly. Kane was smiling with the charming content of a perfectly happy

man. When Captain Llewellyn told him his men were not needed, and to rejoin his troop, he led his detail

over the edge of the hill on which we lay. As he disappeared below the crest he did not stoop to avoid the

bullets, but walked erect, still smiling. Roosevelt pointed out that it was impossible to advance farther on

account of the network of wild grapevines that masked the Spaniards from us, and that we must cross the

trail and make to the left. The shouts the men had raised to warn Capron had established our position to the

enemy, and the firing was now fearfully accurate. Sergeant Russell, who in his day had been a colonel on a

governor's staff, was killed, and the other sergeant was shot through the wrist. In the space of three minutes

nine men were lying on their backs helpless. Before we got away, every third man was killed, or wounded.

We drew off slowly to the left, dragging the wounded with us. Owing to the low aim of the enemy, we were

forced to move on our knees and crawl. Even then men were hit. One man near me was shot through the

head. Returning later to locate the body and identify him, I found that the buzzards had torn off his lips and

his eyes. This mutilation by these hideous birds was, without doubt, what Admiral Sampson mistook for the

work of the Spaniards, when the bodies of the marines at Guantanamo were found disfigured. K Troop

meantime had deployed into the valley under the fire from the enemy on the ridge. It had been ordered to

establish communication with General Young's column, and while advancing and firing on the ridge, Captain

Jenkins sent the guidon bearer back to climb the hill and wave his red and white banner where Young's men

could see it. The guidon bearer had once run for Congress on the gold ticket in Arizona, and, as some one

said, was naturally the man who should have been selected for a forlorn hope. His flag brought him instantly

under a heavy fire, but he continued waving it until the Tenth Cavalry on the other side of the valley

answered, and the two columns were connected by a skirmishline composed of K Troop and A, under

G Troop meanwhile had hurried over to the left, and passing through the opening in the wire fence had spread

out into open order. It followed down after Captain Luna's troop and D and E Troops, which were well

already in advance. Roosevelt ran forward and took command of the extreme left of this line. Wood was

walking up and down along it, leading his horse, which he thought might be of use in case he had to move

quickly to alter his original formation. His plan, at present, was to spread out his men so that they would join

Young on the right, and on the left swing around until they flanked the enemy. K and A Troops had already

succeeded in joining hands with Young's column across the valley, and as they were capable of taking care of

themselves, Wood was bending his efforts to keep his remaining four companies in a straight line and

revolving them around the enemy's "end." It was in no way an easy thing to do. The men were at times

wholly hidden from each other, and from him; probably at no one time did he see more than two of his troops

together. It was only by the firing that he could tell where his men lay, and that they were always advancing.

The advances were made in quick, desperate rushessometimes the ground gained was no more than a man

covers in sliding for a base. At other times half a troop would rise and race forward and then burrow deep in

the hot grass and fire. On this side of the line there was an occasional glimpse of the enemy. But for a great

part of the time the men shot at the places from where the enemy's fire seemed to come, aiming low and

answering in steady volleys. The fire discipline was excellent. The prophets of evil of the Tampa Bay Hotel

had foretold that the cowboys would shoot as they chose, and, in the field, would act independently of their

officers. As it turned out, the cowboys were the very men who waited most patiently for the officers to give

the word of command. At all times the movement was without rest, breathless and fierce, like a canerush, or

a street fight. After the first three minutes every man had stripped as though for a wrestling match, throwing

off all his impedimenta but his cartridgebelt and canteen. Even then the sun handicapped their strength

cruelly. The enemy was hidden in the shade of the jungle, while they, for every thicket they gained, had to

fight in the open, crawling through grass which was as hot as a steam bath, and with their flesh and clothing

torn by thorns and the swordlike blade of the Spanish "bayonet." The glare of the sun was full in their eyes

When G Troop passed on across the trail to the left I stopped at the place where the column had first

haltedit had been converted into a dressing station and the wounded of G Troop were left there in the care

of the hospital stewards. A tall, gaunt young man with a cross on his arm was just coming back up the trail.

His head was bent, and by some surgeon's trick he was carrying a wounded man much heavier than himself

across his shoulders. As I stepped out of the trail he raised his head, and smiled and nodded, and left me

wondering where I had seen him before, smiling in the same cheery, confident way and moving in that same

position. I knew it could not have been under the same conditions, and yet he was certainly associated with

another time of excitement and rush and heat. Then I remembered him. As now he had been covered with

blood and dirt and perspiration, but then he wore a canvas jacket and the man he carried on his shoulders was

trying to hold him back from a whitewashed line. And I recognized the young doctor, with the blood

bathing his breeches, as "Bob" Church, of Princeton. That was only one of four badly wounded men he

carried that day on his shoulders over a halfmile of trail that stretched from the firingline back to the

dressing station and under an unceasing fire. {3} As the senior surgeon was absent he had chief responsibility

that day for all the wounded, and that so few of them died is greatly due to this young man who went down

into the firing line and pulled them from it, and bore them out of danger. The comic paragraphers who wrote

of the members of the Knickerbocker Club and the college swells of the Rough Riders and of their imaginary

valets and golf clubs, should, in decency, since the fight at Guasimas apologize. For the same spirit that once

sent these men down a whitewashed field against their opponents' rush line was the spirit that sent Church,

Channing, Devereux, Ronalds, Wrenn, Cash, Bull, Lamed, Goodrich, Greenway, Dudley Dean, and a dozen

others through the high hot grass at Guasimas, not shouting, as their friends the cowboys did, but each with

his mouth tightly shut, with his eyes on the ball, and moving in obedience to the captain's signals.

Judging from the sound, our firingline now seemed to be half a mile in advance of the place where the head

of the column had first halted. This showed that the Spaniards had been driven back at least three hundred

yards from their original position. It was impossible to see any of our men in the field, so I ran down the trail

with the idea that it would lead me back to the troop I had left when I had stopped at the dressing station. The

walk down that trail presented one of the most grewsome pictures of the war. It narrowed as it descended; it

was for that reason the enemy had selected that part of it for the attack, and the vines and bushes interlaced so

The rocks on either side were spattered with blood and the rank grass was matted with it. Blanket rolls,

haversacks, carbines, and canteens had been abandoned all along its length. It looked as though a retreating

army had fled along it, rather than that one troop had fought its way through it to the front. Except for the

clatter of the landcrabs, those hideous orchidcolored monsters that haunt the places of the dead, and the

whistling of the bullets in the trees, the place was as silent as a grave. For the wounded lying along its length

were as still as the dead beside them. The noise of the loose stones rolling under my feet brought a hospital

"Lieutenant Thomas is badly wounded in here, and we can't move him. We want to carry him out of the sun

some place, where there is shade and a breeze." Thomas was the first lieutenant of Capron's troop. He is a

young man, large and powerfully built. He was shot through the leg just below the trunk, and I found him

lying on a blanket half naked and covered with blood, and with his leg bound in tourniquets made of twigs

and pockethandkerchiefs. It gave one a thrill of awe and wonder to see how these cowboy surgeons, with a

stick that one would use to light a pipe and with the gaudy 'kerchiefs they had taken from their necks, were

holding death at bay. The young officer was in great pain and tossing and raving wildly. When we gathered

up the corners of his blanket and lifted him, he tried to sit upright, and cried out, "You're taking me to the

front, aren't you? You said you would. They've killed my captaindo you understand? They've killed

The troopers assured him they were carrying him to the firingline, but he was not satisfied. We stumbled

over the stones and vines, bumping his wounded body against the ground and leaving a black streak in the

grass behind us, but it seemed to hurt us more than it did him, for he sat up again clutching at us imploringly

"For God's sake, take me to the front," he begged. "Do you hear? I order you; damn you, I orderWe must

give them hell; do you hear? we must give them hell. They've killed Capron. They've killed my captain."

The loss of blood at last mercifully silenced him, and when we had reached the trail he had fainted and I left

them kneeling around him, their grave boyish faces filled with sympathy and concern.

Only fifty feet from him and farther down the trail I passed his captain, with his body propped against

Church's knee and with his head fallen on the surgeon's shoulder. Capron was always a handsome, soldierly

looking mansome said that he was the most soldierly looking of any of the young officers in the

armyand as I saw him then death had given him a great dignity and nobleness. He was only twentyeight

years old, the age when life has just begun, but he rested his head on the surgeon's shoulder like a man who

knew he was already through with it and that, though they might peck and mend at the body, he had received

his final orders. His breast and shoulders were bare, and as the surgeon cut the tunic from him the sight of his

great chest and the skin, as white as a girl's, and the black open wound against it made the yellow stripes and

Fifty yards farther on, around a turn in the trail, behind a rock, a boy was lying with a bullet wound between

his eyes. His chest was heaving with short, hoarse noises which I guessed were due to some muscular action

entirely, and that he was virtually dead. I lifted him and gave him some water, but it would not pass through

his fixed teeth. In the pocket of his blouse was a New Testament with the name Fielder Dawson, Mo.,

scribbled in it in pencil. While I was writing it down for identification, a boy as young as himself came from

"It is no use," he said; "the surgeon has seen him; he says he is just the same as dead. He is my bunkie; we

only met two weeks ago at San Antonio; but he and me had got to be such good friendsBut there's nothing

I can do now." He threw himself down on the rock beside his bunkie, who was still breathing with that hoarse

inhuman rattle, and I left them, the one who had been spared looking down helplessly with the tears creeping

The firing was quite close now, and the trail was no longer filled with blanket rolls and haversacks, nor did

pitiful, prostrate figures lie in wait behind each rock. I guessed this must mean that I now was well in advance

of the farthest point to which Capron's troop had moved, and I was running forward feeling confident that I

must be close on our men, when I saw the body of a sergeant blocking the trail and stretched at full length

across it. Its position was a hundred yards in advance of that of any of the othersit was apparently the body

of the first man killed. After death the bodies of some men seem to shrink almost instantly within themselves;

they become limp and shapeless, and their uniforms hang upon them strangely. But this man, who was a giant

in life, remained a giant in deathhis very attitude was one of attack; his fists were clinched, his jaw set, and

his eyes, which were still human, seemed fixed with resolve. He was dead, but he was not defeated. And so

Hamilton Fish died as he had liveddefiantly, running into the very face of the enemy, standing squarely

upright on his legs instead of crouching, as the others called to him to do, until he fell like a column across

the trail. "God gives," was the motto on the watch I took from his blouse, and God could not have given him

a nobler end; to die, in the forefront of the first fight of the war, quickly, painlessly, with a bullet through

The line at this time was divided by the trail into two wings. The right wing, composed of K and A Troops,

was advancing through the valley, returning the fire from the ridge as it did so, and the left wing, which was

much the longer of the two, was swinging around on the enemy's right flank, with its own right resting on the

barbed wire fence. I borrowed a carbine from a wounded man, and joined the remnant of L Troop which

This troop was then commanded by Second Lieutenant Day, who on account of his conduct that morning and

at the battle of San Juan later, when he was shot through the arm, was promoted to be captain of L Troop, or,

as it was later officially designated, Capron's troop. He was walking up and down the line as unconcernedly

as though we were at target practice, and an Irish sergeant, Byrne, was assisting him by keeping up a

continuous flow of comments and criticisms that showed the keenest enjoyment of the situation. Byrne was

the only man I noticed who seemed to regard the fight as in any way humorous. For at Guasimas, no one had

time to be flippant, or to exhibit any signs of braggadocio. It was for all of them, from the moment it started,

through the hot, exhausting hour and a half that it lasted, a most serious proposition. The conditions were

exceptional. The men had made a night march the evening before, had been given but three hours' troubled

sleep on the wet sand, and had then been marched in full equipment uphill and under a cruelly hot sun,

directly into action. And eighty per cent. of them had never before been under fire. Nor had one man in the

regiment ever fired a KragJorgensen carbine until he fired it at a Spaniard, for their arms had been issued to

them so soon before sailing that they had only drilled with them without using cartridges. To this handicap

was also added the nature of the ground and the fact that our men could not see their opponents. Their own

men fell or rolled over on every side, shot down by an invisible enemy, with no one upon whom they could

retaliate, with no sign that the attack might not go on indefinitely. Yet they never once took a step backward,

but advanced grimly, cleaning a bush or thicket of its occupants before charging it, and securing its cover for

themselves, and answering each volley with one that sounded like an echo of the first. The men were panting

for breath; the sweat ran so readily into their eyes that they could not see the sights of their guns; their limbs

unused to such exertion after seven days of cramped idleness on the troopship, trembled with weakness and

the sun blinded and dazzled them; but time after time they rose and staggered forward through the high grass,

or beat their way with their carbines against the tangle of vines and creepers. A mile and a half of territory

was gained foot by foot in this fashion, the three Spanish positions carried in that distance being marked by

the thousands of Mauser cartridges that lay shining and glittering in the grass and behind the barricades of

bushes. But this distance had not been gained without many losses, for every one in the regiment was

engaged. Even those who, on account of the heat, had dropped out along the trail, as soon as the sound of the

fight reached them, came limping to the frontand plunged into the firing line. It was the only place they

could gothere was no other line. With the exception of Church's dressing station and its wounded there

Among the first to be wounded was the correspondent, Edward Marshall, of the New York Journal, who was

on the firingline to the left. He was shot through the body near the spine, and when I saw him he was

suffering the most terrible agonies, and passing through a succession of convulsions. He nevertheless, in his

brief moments of comparative peace, bore himself with the utmost calm, and was so much a soldier to duty

that he continued writing his account of the fight until the fight itself was ended. His courage was the

admiration of all the troopers, and he was highly commended by Colonel Wood in the official account of the

Nothing so well illustrated how desperately each man was needed, and how little was his desire to withdraw,

as the fact that the wounded lay where they fell until the hospital stewards found them. Their comrades did

not use them as an excuse to go to leave the firing line. I have watched other fights, where the men engaged

The fight had now lasted an hour, and the line had reached a more open country, with a slight incline upward

toward a wood, on the edge of which was a ruined house. This house was a former distillery for aguardiente,

and was now occupied in force by the enemy. Lieutenant Colonel Roosevelt on the far left was moving up

his men with the intention of taking this house on the flank; Wood, who was all over the line, had the same

objective point in his mind. The troop commanders had a general idea that the distillery was the key to the

enemy's position, and were all working in that direction. It was extremely difficult for Wood and Roosevelt to

communicate with the captains, and after the first general orders had been given them they relied upon the

latter's intelligence to pull them through. I do not suppose Wood, out of the five hundred engaged, saw more

than thirty of his men at any one time. When he had passed one troop, except for the noise of its volley firing,

it was immediately lost to him in the brush, and it was so with the next. Still, so excellent was the intelligence

of the officers, and so ready the spirit of the men, that they kept an almost perfect alignment, as was shown

when the final order came to charge in the open fields. The advance upon the ruined building was made in

stubborn, short rushes, sometimes in silence, and sometimes firing as we ran. The order to fire at will was

seldom given, the men waiting patiently for the officers' signal, and then answering in volleys. Some of the

men who were twice Day's age begged him to let them take the enemy's impromptu fort on the run, but he

answered them tolerantly like spoiled children, and held them down until there was a lull in the enemy's fire,

when he would lead them forward, always taking the advance himself. By the way they made these rushes, it

was easy to tell which men were used to hunting big game in the West and which were not. The Eastern men

broke at the word, and ran for the cover they were directed to take like men trying to get out of the rain, and

fell panting on their faces, while the Western trappers and hunters slipped and wriggled through the grass like

Indians; dodging from tree trunk to tree trunk, and from one bush to another. They fell into line at the same

time with the others, but while doing so they had not once exposed themselves. Some of the escapes were

little short of miraculous. The man on my right, Champneys Marshall, of Washington, had one bullet pass

through his sleeve, and another pass through his shirt, where it was pulled close to his spine. The holes where

the ball entered and went out again were clearly cut. Another man's skin was slightly burned by three bullets

in three distinct lines, as though it had been touched for an instant by the lighted end of a cigar. Greenway

was shot through this shirt across the breast, and Roosevelt was so close to one bullet, when it struck a tree,

that it filled his eyes and ears with tiny splinters. Major Brodie and Lieutenant Thomas were both wounded

within a few feet of Colonel Wood, and his colorsergeant, Wright, who followed close at his heels, was

clipped three times in the head and neck, and four bullets passed through the folds of the flag he carried. One

trooper, Rowland, of Deming, was shot through the lower ribs; he was ordered by Roosevelt to fall back to

the dressing station, but there Church told him there was nothing he could do for him then, and directed him

to sit down until he could be taken to the hospital at Siboney. Rowland sat still for a short time, and then

remarked restlessly, "I don't seem to be doing much good here," and picking up his carbine, returned to the

"Yes, sir, you did," Rowland said, "but there didn't seem to be much doing back there."

After the fight he was sent to Siboney with the rest of the wounded, but two days later he appeared in camp.

He had marched from Siboney, a distance of six miles, and uphill all the way, carrying his carbine, canteen,

"I thought you were in hospital," Wood said. "I was," Rowland answered sheepishly, "but I didn't seem to be

They gave him up as hopeless, and he continued his duties and went into the fight of the San Juan hills with

the hole still through his ribs. Another cowboy named Heffner, when shot through the body, asked to be

propped up against a tree with his canteen and cartridge belt beside him, and the last his troop saw of him he

Early in the fight I came upon Church attending to a young cowboy, who was shot through the chest. The

entrance to his wound was so small that Church could not insert enough of the gauze packing to stop the flow

"I'm afraid I'll have to make this hole larger, he said to the boy, "or you'll bleed to death."

"All right," the trooper answered, "I guess you know your business." The boy stretched out on his back and

lay perfectly quiet while Church, with a pair of curved scissors, cut away the edges of the wound. His patient

neither whimpered nor swore, but stared up at the sun in silence. The bullets were falling on every side, and

the operation was a hasty one, but the trooper made no comment until Church said, "We'd better get out of

Another of the Rough Riders was brought to the dressing station with a shattered ankle, and Church, after

bandaging it, gave him his choice of riding down to Siboney on a mule, or of being carried, a day later, on a

"If you think you can manage to ride the mule with that broken foot," he said, "you can start at once, but if

you wait until tomorrow, when I can spare the men, you can be carried all the way."

The cowboy preferred to start at once, so six hospital stewards lifted him and dropped him on the mule, and

He stuck his wounded ankle into one stirrup, and his untouched one into the other, and gathered up the reins.

"Does it pain you? Can you stand it?" Church asked anxiously. The cowboy turned and smiled down upon

Toward the last, the firing from the enemy sounded less near, and the bullets passed much higher. Roosevelt,

who had picked up a carbine and was firing to give the direction to the others, determined upon a charge.

Wood, at the other end of the line, decided at the same time upon the same manoeuvre. It was called "Wood's

bluff" afterward, for he had nothing to back it with; while to the enemy it looked as though his whole force

was but the skirmishline in advance of a regiment. The Spaniards naturally could not believe that this thin

line which suddenly broke out of the bushes and from behind trees and came cheering out into the hot

sunlight was the entire fighting force against it. They supposed the regiment was coming close on its heels,

and as Spanish troops hate being rushed as a cat hates water, they fired a few parting volleys and broke and

ran. The cheering had the same invigorating effect on our own side as a cold shower; it was what first told

half the men where the other half were, and it made every individual man feel better. As we knew it was only

a bluff, the first cheer was wavering, but the sound of our own voices was so comforting that the second

As it was, the Spaniards thought the Rough Riders had already disregarded all the rules of war.

"When we fired a volley," one of the prisoners said later, "instead of falling back they came forward. That is

not the way to fight, to come closer at every volley." And so, when instead of retreating on each volley, the

Rough Riders rushed at them, cheering and filling the hot air with wild cowboy yells, the dismayed enemy

retreated upon Santiago, where he announced he had been attacked by the entire American army.

One of the residents of Santiago asked one of the soldiers if those Americans fought well.

I have not attempted to give any account of General Young's fight on our right, which was equally desperate,

and, owing to the courage of the colored troops of the Tenth in storming a ridge, equally worthy of praise.

But it has seemed better not to try and tell of anything I did not see, but to limit myself to the work of the

Rough Riders, to whom, after all, the victory was due, as it was owing to Colonel Wood's charge, which took

the Spaniards in flank, that General Wheeler and General Young were able to advance, their own stubborn

According to the statement of the enemy, who had every reason not to exaggerate the size of his own force,

4,000 Spaniards were engaged in this action. The Rough Riders numbered 534, and General Young's force

numbered 464. The American troops accordingly attacked a force over four times their own number

intrenched behind riflepits and bushes in a mountain pass. In spite of the smokeless powder used by the

Spaniards, which hid their position, the Rough Riders routed them out of it, and drove them back from three

different barricades until they made their last stand in the ruined distillery, whence they finally drove them by

assault. The eager spirit in which this was accomplished is best described in the Spanish soldier's answer to

the inquiring civilian, "They tried to catch us with their hands." The Rough Riders should adopt it as their

After the Guasimas fight on June 24, the army was advanced along the single trail which leads from Siboney

on the coast to Santiago. Two streams of excellent water run parallel with this trail for short distances, and

some eight miles from the coast crossed it in two places. Our outposts were stationed at the first of these

fords, the Cuban outposts a mile and a half farther on at the ford nearer Santiago, where the stream made a

sharp turn at a place called El Poso. Another mile and a half of trail extended from El Poso to the trenches of

San Juan. The reader should remember El Poso, as it marked an important startingpoint against San Juan on

For six days the army was encamped on either side of the trail for three miles back from the outposts. The

regimental camps touched each other, and all day long the packtrains carrying the day's rations passed up

and down between them. The trail was a sunken wagon road, where it was possible, in a few places, for two

wagons to pass at one time, but the greater distances were so narrow that there was but just room for a wagon,

or a loaded muletrain, to make its way. The banks of the trail were three or four feet high, and when it

rained it was converted into a huge gutter, with sides of mud, and with a liquid mud a foot deep between

them. The camps were pitched along the trail as near the parallel stream as possible, and in the occasional

places where there was rich, high grass. At night the men slept in dog tents, open at the front and back, and

during the day spent their time under the shade of trees along the trail, or on the banks of the stream. Sentries

were placed at every few feet along these streams to guard them from any possible pollution. For six days the

army rested in this way, for as an army moves and acts only on its belly, and as the belly of this army was

This week of rest, after the cramped life of the troopship, was not ungrateful, although the rations were

scarce and there was no tobacco, which was as necessary to the health of the men as their food.

During this week of waiting, the chief excitement was to walk out a mile and a half beyond the outposts to

the hill of El Poso, and look across the basin that lay in the great valley which leads to Santiago. The left of

the valley was the hills which hide the sea. The right of the valley was the hills in which nestle the village of

El Caney. Below El Poso, in the basin, the dense green forest stretched a mile and a half to the hills of San

Juan. These hills looked so quiet and sunny and well kept that they reminded one of a New England orchard.

There was a blue bungalow on a hill to the right, a red bungalow higher up on the right, and in the centre the

blockhouse of San Juan, which looked like a Chinese pagoda. Three quarters of a mile behind them, with a

dip between, were the long white walls of the hospital and barracks of Santiago, wearing thirteen Red Cross

flags, and, as was pointed out to the foreign attaches later, two sixinch guns a hundred yards in advance of

It was so quiet, so fair, and so prosperous looking that it breathed of peace. It seemed as though one might,

without accident, walk in and take dinner at the Venus Restaurant, or loll on the benches in the Plaza, or rock

But, on the 27th of June, a long, yellow pit opened in the hillside of San Juan, and in it we could see straw

sombreros rising and bobbing up and down, and under the shade of the blockhouse, blue coated Spaniards

strolling leisurely about or riding forth on little white ponies to scamper over the hills. Officers of every

regiment, attaches of foreign countries, correspondents, and staff officers daily reported the fact that the

riflepits were growing in length and in number, and that in plain sight from the hill of El Poso the enemy

was intrenching himself at San Juan, and at the little village of El Caney to the right, where he was marching

through the streets. But no artillery was sent to El Poso hill to drop a shell among the busy men at work

among the trenches, or to interrupt the street parades in El Caney. For four days before the American soldiers

captured the same riflepits at El Caney and San Juan, with a loss of two thousand men, they watched these

men diligently preparing for their coming, and wondered why there was no order to embarrass or to end these

On the afternoon of June 30, Captain Mills rode up to the tent of Colonel Wood, and told him that on account

of illness, General Wheeler and General Young had relinquished their commands, and that General Sumner

would take charge of the Cavalry Division; that he, Colonel Wood, would take command of General Young's

"You will break camp and move forward at four o'clock," he said. It was then three o'clock, and apparently

the order to move forward at four had been given to each regiment at nearly the same time, for they all struck

their tents and stepped down into the trail together. It was as though fifteen regiments were encamped along

the sidewalks of Fifth Avenue and were all ordered at the same moment to move into it and march

General Chaffee was at General Lawton's headquarters, and they stood apart whispering together about the

march they were to take to El Caney. Just over their heads the balloon was ascending for the first time and its

great glistening bulk hung just above the tree tops, and the men in different regiments, picking their way

along the trail, gazed up at it openmouthed. The headquarters camp was crowded. After a week of inaction

the army, at a moment's notice, was moving forward, and every one had ridden in haste to learn why.

There were attaches, in strange uniforms, selfimportant Cuban generals, officers from the flagship New

York, and an army of photographers. At the side of the camp, double lines of soldiers passed slowly along the

two paths of the muddy road, while, between them, aides dashed up and down, splashing them with dirty

water, and shouting, "You will come up at once, sir." "You will not attempt to enter the trail yet, sir."

Twelve thousand men, with their eyes fixed on a balloon, and treading on each other's heels in three inches of

mud, move slowly, and after three hours, it seemed as though every man in the United States was under arms

and stumbling and slipping down that trail. The lines passed until the moon rose. They seemed endless,

interminable; there were cavalry mounted and dismounted, artillery with cracking whips and cursing drivers,

Rough Riders in brown, and regulars, both black and white, in blue. Midnight came, and they were still

General Sumner's headquarters tent was pitched to the right of El Poso hill. Below us lay the basin a mile

and a half in length, and a mile and a half wide, from which a white mist was rising. Near us, drowned under

the mist, seven thousand men were sleeping, and, farther to the right, General Chaffee's five thousand were

lying under the bushes along the trails to El Caney, waiting to march on it and eat it up before breakfast.

The place hardly needs a map to explain it. The trails were like a pitchfork, with its prongs touching the hills

of San Juan. The long handle of the pitchfork was the trail over which we had just come, the joining of the

handle and the prongs were El Poso. El Caney lay halfway along the right prong, the left one was the trail

down which, in the morning, the troops were to be hurled upon San Juan. It was as yet an utterly

undiscovered country. Three miles away, across the basin of mist, we could see the street lamps of Santiago

shining over the San Juan hills. Above us, the tropical moon hung white and clear in the dark purple sky,

pierced with millions of white stars. As we turned in, there was just a little something in the air which made

saying "goodnight" a gentle farce, for no one went to sleep immediately, but lay looking up at the stars, and

after a long silence, and much restless turning on the blanket which we shared together, the second lieutenant

said: "So, if anything happens to me, tomorrow, you'll see she gets them, won't you?" Before the moon rose

again, every sixth man who had slept in the mist that night was either killed or wounded; but the second

lieutenant was sitting on the edge of a Spanish riflepit, dirty, sweaty, and weak for food, but victorious, and

El Caney had not yet thrown off her blanket of mist before Capron's battery opened on it from a ridge two

miles in the rear. The plan for the day was that El Caney should fall in an hour. The plan for the day is

interesting chiefly because it is so different from what happened. According to the plan the army was to

advance in two divisions along the two trails. Incidentally, General Lawton's division was to pick up El

Caney, and when El Caney was eliminated, his division was to continue forward and join hands on the right

with the divisions of General Sumner and General Kent. The army was then to rest for that night in the

On the following morning it was to attack San Juan on the two flanks, under cover of artillery. The objection

to this plan, which did not apparently suggest itself to General Shafter, was that an army of twelve thousand

men, sleeping within five hundred yards of the enemy's riflepits, might not unreasonably be expected to pass

a bad night. As we discovered the next day, not only the five hundred yards, but the whole basin was covered

by the fire from the rifle pits. Even by daylight, when it was possible to seek some slight shelter, the army

could not remain in the woods, but according to the plan it was expected to bivouac for the night in those

woods, and in the morning to manoeuvre and deploy and march through them to the two flanks of San Juan.

How the enemy was to be hypnotized while this was going forward it is difficult to understand.

According to this programme, Capron's battery opened on El Caney and Grimes's battery opened on the

pagodalike blockhouse of San Juan. The range from El Poso was exactly 2,400 yards, and the firing, as

was discovered later, was not very effective. The battery used black powder, and, as a result, after each

explosion the curtain of smoke hung over the gun for fully a minute before the gunners could see the San

Juan trenches, which was chiefly important because for a full minute it gave a mark to the enemy. The hill on

which the battery stood was like a sugarloaf. Behind it was the farmhouse of El Poso, the only building in

sight within a radius of a mile, and in it were Cuban soldiers and other noncombatants. The Rough Riders

had been ordered to halt in the yard of the farmhouse and the artillery horses were drawn up in it, under the

lee of the hill. The First and Tenth dismounted Cavalry were encamped a hundred yards from the battery

along the ridge. They might as sensibly have been ordered to paint the rings in a target while a company was

firing at the bull's eye. To our first twenty shots the enemy made no reply; when they did it was impossible,

owing to their using smokeless powder, to locate their guns. Their third shell fell in among the Cubans in the

blockhouse and among the Rough Riders and the men of the First and Tenth Cavalry, killing some and

wounding many. These casualties were utterly unnecessary and were due to the stupidity of whoever placed

A quarter of an hour after the firing began from El Poso one of General Shafter's aides directed General

Sumner to advance with his division down the Santiago trail, and to halt at the edge of the woods.

As a matter of fact and history this was probably the last order General Sumner received from General

Shafter, until the troops of his division had taken the San Juan hills, as it became impossible to get word to

General Shafter, the trail leading to his headquarters tent, three miles in the rear, being blocked by the

soldiers of the First and Tenth dismounted Cavalry, and later, by Lawton's division. General Sumner led the

Sixth, Third, and Ninth Cavalry and the Rough Riders down the trail, with instructions for the First and Tenth

to follow. The trail, virgin as yet from the foot of an American soldier, was as wide as its narrowest part,

which was some ten feet across. At places it was as wide as Broadway, but only for such short distances that

it was necessary for the men to advance in column, in double file. A maze of underbrush and trees on either

side was all but impenetrable, and when the officers and men had once assembled into the basin, they could

only guess as to what lay before them, or on either flank. At the end of a mile the country became more open,

and General Sumner saw the Spaniards intrenched a half mile away on the sloping hills. A stream, called the

San Juan River, ran across the trail at this point, and another stream crossed it again two hundred yards

farther on. The troops were halted at this first stream, some crossing it, and others deploying in single file to

the right. Some were on the banks of the stream, others at the edge of the woods in the bushes. Others lay in

the high grass which was so high that it stopped the wind, and so hot that it almost choked and suffocated

The enemy saw the advance and began firing with pitiless accuracy into the jammed and crowded trail and

along the whole border of the woods. There was not a single yard of ground for a mile to the rear which was

not inside the zone of fire. Our men were ordered not to return the fire but to lie still and wait for further

orders. Some of them could see the riflepits of the enemy quite clearly and the men in them, but many saw

nothing but the bushes under which they lay, and the high grass which seemed to burn when they pressed

against it. It was during this period of waiting that the greater number of our men were killed. For one hour

they lay on their rifles staring at the waving green stuff around them, while the bullets drove past incessantly,

with savage insistence, cutting the grass again and again in hundreds of fresh places. Men in line sprang from

the ground and sank back again with a groan, or rolled to one side clinging silently to an arm or shoulder.

Behind the lines hospital stewards passed continually, drawing the wounded back to the streams, where they

laid them in long rows, their feet touching the water's edge and their bodies supported by the muddy bank. Up

and down the lines, and through the fords of the streams, mounted aides drove their horses at a gallop, as

conspicuous a target as the steeple on a church, and one after another paid the price of his position and fell

from his horse wounded or dead. Captain Mills fell as he was giving an order, shot through the forehead

behind both eyes; Captain O'Neill, of the Rough Riders, as he said, "There is no Spanish bullet made that can

Hidden in the trees above the streams, and above the trail, sharp shooters and guerillas added a fresh terror

to the wounded. There was no hiding from them. Their bullets came from every side. Their invisible smoke

helped to keep their hidingplaces secret, and in the incessant shriek of shrapnel and the spit of the Mausers,

it was difficult to locate the reports of their rifles. They spared neither the wounded nor recognized the Red

Cross; they killed the surgeons and the stewards carrying the litters, and killed the wounded men on the

litters. A guerilla in a tree above us shot one of the Rough Riders in the breast while I was helping him carry

Captain Morton Henry to the dressingstation, the ball passing down through him, and a second shot, from

the same tree, barely missed Henry as he lay on the ground where we had dropped him. He was already twice

wounded and so covered with blood that no one could have mistaken his condition. The surgeons at work

along the stream dressed the wounds with one eye cast aloft at the trees. It was not the Mauser bullets they

feared, though they passed continuously, but too high to do their patients further harm, but the bullets of the

sharpshooters which struck fairly in among them, splashing in the water and scattering the pebbles. The

sounds of the two bullets were as different as is the sharp pop of a sodawater bottle from the buzzing of an

For a time it seemed as though every second man was either killed or wounded; one came upon them lying

behind the bush, under which they had crawled with some strange idea that it would protect them, or

crouched under the bank of the stream, or lying on their stomachs and lapping up the water with the

eagerness of thirsty dogs. As to their suffering, the wounded were magnificently silent, they neither

"I've got a punctured tire," was their grim answer to inquiries. White men and colored men, veterans and

recruits and volunteers, each lay waiting for the battle to begin or to end so that he might be carried away to

safety, for the wounded were in as great danger after they were hit as though they were in the firing line, but

I came across Lieutenant Roberts, of the Tenth Cavalry, lying under the roots of a tree beside the stream with

three of his colored troopers stretched around him. He was shot through the intestines, and each of the three

men with him was shot in the arm or leg. They had been overlooked or forgotten, and we stumbled upon

them only by the accident of losing our way. They had no knowledge as to how the battle was going or where

their comrades were or where the enemy was. At any moment, for all they knew, the Spaniards might break

through the bushes about them. It was a most lonely picture, the young lieutenant, half naked, and wet with

his own blood, sitting upright beside the empty stream, and his three followers crouching at his feet like three

faithful watchdogs, each wearing his red badge of courage, with his black skin tanned to a haggard gray,

and with his eyes fixed patiently on the white lips of his officer. When the white soldiers with me offered to

carry him back to the dressing station, the negroes resented it stiffly. "If the Lieutenant had been able to

move, we would have carried him away long ago," said the sergeant, quite overlooking the fact that his arm

"Oh, don't bother the surgeons about me," Roberts added, cheerfully. "They must be very busy. I can wait."

As yet, with all these killed and wounded, we had accomplished nothingexcept to obey orderswhich

was to await further orders. The observation balloon hastened the end. It came blundering down the trail, and

stopped the advance of the First and Tenth Cavalry, and was sent up directly over the heads of our men to

observe what should have been observed a week before by scouts and reconnoitring parties. A balloon, two

miles to the rear, and high enough in the air to be out of range of the enemy's fire may some day prove itself

to be of use and value. But a balloon on the advance line, and only fifty feet above the tops of the trees, was

merely an invitation to the enemy to kill everything beneath it. And the enemy responded to the invitation. A

Spaniard might question if he could hit a man, or a number of men, hidden in the bushes, but had no doubt at

all as to his ability to hit a mammoth glistening ball only six hundred yards distant, and so all the trenches

fired at it at once, and the men of the First and Tenth, packed together directly behind it, received the full

force of the bullets. The men lying directly below it received the shrapnel which was timed to hit it, and

which at last, fortunately, did hit it. This was endured for an hour, an hour of such hell of fire and heat, that

the heat in itself, had there been no bullets, would have been remembered for its cruelty. Men gasped on their

backs, like fishes in the bottom of a boat, their heads burning inside and out, their limbs too heavy to move.

They had been rushed here and rushed there wet with sweat and wet with fording the streams, under a sun

that would have made moving a fan an effort, and they lay prostrate, gasping at the hot air, with faces aflame,

and their tongues sticking out, and their eyes rolling. All through this the volleys from the riflepits sputtered

and rattled, and the bullets sang continuously like the wind through the rigging in a gale, shrapnel whined and

Captain Howse, of General Sumner's staff, rode down the trail to learn what had delayed the First and Tenth,

and was hailed by Colonel Derby, who was just descending from the shattered balloon.

"I saw men up there on those hills," Colonel Derby shouted; "they are firing at our troops." That was part of

the information contributed by the balloon. Captain Howse's reply is lost to history.

General Kent's division, which, according to the plan, was to have been held in reserve, had been rushed up

in the rear of the First and Tenth, and the Tenth had deployed in skirmish order to the right. The trail was now

completely blocked by Kent's division. Lawton's division, which was to have reenforced on the right, had

not appeared, but incessant firing from the direction of El Caney showed that he and Chaffee were fighting

mightily. The situation was desperate. Our troops could not retreat, as the trail for two miles behind them was

wedged with men. They could not remain where they were, for they were being shot to pieces. There was

only one thing they could dogo forward and take the San Juan hills by assault. It was as desperate as the

situation itself. To charge earthworks held by men with modern rifles, and using modern artillery, until after

the earthworks have been shaken by artillery, and to attack them in advance and not in the flanks, are both

impossible military propositions. But this campaign had not been conducted according to military rules, and a

series of military blunders had brought seven thousand American soldiers into a chute of death from which

there was no escape except by taking the enemy who held it by the throat and driving him out and beating

him down. So the generals of divisions and brigades stepped back and relinquished their command to the

Colonel Roosevelt, on horseback, broke from the woods behind the line of the Ninth, and finding its men

lying in his way, shouted: "If you don't wish to go forward, let my men pass." The junior officers of the

Ninth, with their negroes, instantly sprang into line with the Rough Riders, and charged at the blue

I speak of Roosevelt first because, with General Hawkins, who led Kent's division, notably the Sixth and

Sixteenth Regulars, he was, without doubt, the most conspicuous figure in the charge. General Hawkins, with

hair as white as snow, and yet far in advance of men thirty years his junior, was so noble a sight that you felt

inclined to pray for his safety; on the other hand, Roosevelt, mounted high on horseback, and charging the

riflepits at a gallop and quite alone, made you feel that you would like to cheer. He wore on his sombrero a

blue polkadot handkerchief, a la Havelock, which, as he advanced, floated out straight behind his head, like

a guidon. Afterward, the men of his regiment who followed this flag, adopted a polkadot handkerchief as

the badge of the Rough Riders. These two officers were notably conspicuous in the charge, but no one can

claim that any two men, or any one man, was more brave or more daring, or showed greater courage in that

slow, stubborn advance, than did any of the others. Some one asked one of the officers if he had any

difficulty in making his men follow him. "No," he answered, "I had some difficulty in keeping up with them."

As one of the brigade generals said: "San Juan was won by the regimental officers and men. We had as little

to do as the referee at a prizefight who calls 'time.' We called 'time' and they did the fighting."

I have seen many illustrations and pictures of this charge on the San Juan hills, but none of them seem to

show it just as I remember it. In the picturepapers the men are running uphill swiftly and gallantly, in

regular formation, rank after rank, with flags flying, their eyes aflame, and their hair streaming, their bayonets

fixed, in long, brilliant lines, an invincible, overpowering weight of numbers. Instead of which I think the

thing which impressed one the most, when our men started from cover, was that they were so few. It seemed

as if some one had made an awful and terrible mistake. One's instinct was to call to them to come back. You

felt that some one had blundered and that these few men were blindly following out some madman's mad

order. It was not heroic then, it seemed merely absurdly pathetic. The pity of it, the folly of such a sacrifice

They had no glittering bayonets, they were not massed in regular array. There were a few men in advance,

bunched together, and creeping up a steep, sunny hill, the tops of which roared and flashed with flame. The

men held their guns pressed across their chests and stepped heavily as they climbed. Behind these first few,

spreading out like a fan, were single lines of men, slipping and scrambling in the smooth grass, moving

forward with difficulty, as though they were wading waist high through water, moving slowly, carefully, with

strenuous effort. It was much more wonderful than any swinging charge could have been. They walked to

greet death at every step, many of them, as they advanced, sinking suddenly or pitching forward and

disappearing in the high grass, but the others waded on, stubbornly, forming a thin blue line that kept

creeping higher and higher up the hill. It was as inevitable as the rising tide. It was a miracle of selfsacrifice,

a triumph of bulldog courage, which one watched breathless with wonder. The fire of the Spanish riflemen,

who still stuck bravely to their posts, doubled and trebled in fierceness, the crests of the hills crackled and

burst in amazed roars, and rippled with waves of tiny flame. But the blue line crept steadily up and on, and

then, near the top, the broken fragments gathered together with a sudden burst of speed, the Spaniards

appeared for a moment outlined against the sky and poised for instant flight, fired a last volley, and fled

The men of the Ninth and the Rough Riders rushed to the blockhouse together, the men of the Sixth, of the

Third, of the Tenth Cavalry, of the Sixth and Sixteenth Infantry, fell on their faces along the crest of the hills

beyond, and opened upon the vanishing enemy. They drove the yellow silk flags of the cavalry and the flag of

their country into the soft earth of the trenches, and then sank down and looked back at the road they had

climbed and swung their hats in the air. And from far overhead, from these few figures perched on the

Spanish riflepits, with their flags planted among the empty cartridges of the enemy, and overlooking the

This is the inside story of the surrender, during the Spanish War, of the town of Coamo. It is written by the

man to whom the town surrendered. Immediately after the surrender this same man became Military

Before beginning this story the reader must forget all he may happen to know of this particular triumph of the

Porto Rican Expedition. He must forget that the taking of Coamo has always been credited to MajorGeneral

James H. Wilson, who on that occasion commanded Captain Anderson's Battery, the Sixteenth Pennsylvania,

Troop C of Brooklyn, and under General Ernst, the Second and Third Wisconsin Volunteers. He must forget

that in the records of the War Department all the praise, and it is of the highest, for this victory is bestowed

upon General Wilson and his four thousand soldiers. Even the writer of this, when he cabled an account of

the event to his paper, gave, with every one else, the entire credit to General Wilson. And ever since his

conscience has upbraided him. His only claim for tolerance as a war correspondent has been that he always

has stuck to the facts, and now he feels that in the sacred cause of history his friendship and admiration for

General Wilson, that veteran of the Civil, Philippine, and Chinese Wars, must no longer stand in the way of

his duty as an accurate reporter. He no longer can tell a lie. He must at last own up that he himself captured

On the morning of the 9th of August, 1898, the Sixteenth Pennsylvania Volunteers arrived on the outskirts of

that town. In order to get there they had spent the night in crawling over mountain trails and scrambling

through streams and ravines. It was General Wilson's plan that by this flanking night march the Sixteenth

Pennsylvania would reach the road leading from Coamo to San Juan in time to cut off the retreat of the

Spanish garrison, when General Wilson, with the main body, attacked it from the opposite side.

At seven o'clock in the morning General Wilson began the frontal attack by turning loose the artillery on a

blockhouse, which threatened his approach, and by advancing the Wisconsin Volunteers. The cavalry he

sent to the right to capture Los Banos. At eight o'clock, from where the main body rested, two miles from

Coamo, we could hear the Sixteenth Pennsylvania open its attack and instantly become hotly engaged. The

enemy returned the fire fiercely, and the firing from both sides at once became so severe that it was evident

the Pennsylvania Volunteers either would take the town without the main body, or that they would greatly

need its assistance. The artillery was accordingly advanced one thousand yards and the infantry was hurried

forward. The Second Wisconsin approached Coamo along the main road from Ponce, the Third Wisconsin

through fields of grass to the right of the road, until the two regiments met at the ford by which the Banos

road crosses the Coamo River. But before they met, from a position near the artillery, I had watched through

my glasses the Second Wisconsin with General Ernst at its head advancing along the main road, and as, when

I saw them, they were near the river, I guessed they would continue across the bridge and that they soon

As the firing from the Sixteenth still continued, it seemed obvious that General Ernst would be the first

general officer to enter Coamo, and to receive its surrender. I had never seen five thousand people surrender

to one man, and it seemed that, if I were to witness that ceremony, my best plan was to abandon the artillery

and, as quickly as possible, pursue the Second Wisconsin. I did not want to share the spectacle of the

surrender with my brother correspondents, so I tried to steal away from the three who were present. They

were Thomas F. Millard, Walstein Root of the Sun, and Horace Thompson. By dodging through a coffee

central I came out a half mile from them and in advance of the Third Wisconsin. There I encountered two

"boy officers," Captain John C. Breckenridge and Lieutenant Fred. S. Titus, who had temporarily abandoned

their thankless duties in the Commissariat Department in order to seek death or glory in the skirmishline.

They wanted to know where I was going, and when I explained, they declared that when Coamo surrendered

So we slipped away from the main body and rode off as an independent organization. But from the bald

ridge, where the artillery was still hammering the town, the three correspondents and Captain Alfred Paget,

Her Majesty's naval attache, observed our attempt to steal a march on General Wilson's forces, and pursued

We now were seven, or to be exact, eight, for with Mr. Millard was "Jimmy," who in times of peace sells

papers in Herald Square, and in times of war carries Mr. Millard's copy to the press post. We were much

nearer the ford than the bridge, so we waded the "drift" and started on a gallop along the mile of military road

that lay between us and Coamo. The firing from the Sixteenth Pennsylvania had slackened, but as we

advanced it became sharper, more insistent, and seemed to urge us to greater speed. Across the road were dug

rough riflepits which had the look of having been but that moment abandoned. What had been intended for

the breakfast of the enemy was burning in pots over tiny fires, little heaps of cartridges lay in readiness upon

the edges of each pit, and an armchair, in which a sentry had kept a comfortable lookout, lay sprawling in

the middle of the road. The huts that faced it were empty. The only living things we saw were the chickens

and pigs in the kitchengardens. On either hand was every evidence of hasty and panicstricken flight. We

rejoiced at these evidences of the fact that the Wisconsin Volunteers had swept all before them. Our

rejoicings were not entirely unselfish. It was so quiet ahead that some one suggested the town had already

surrendered. But that would have been too bitter a disappointment, and as the firing from the further side of

Coamo still continued, we refused to believe it, and whipped the ponies into greater haste. We were now only

a quarter of a mile distant from the builtup portion of Coamo, where the road turned sharply into the main

Captain Paget, who in the absence of the British military attache on account of sickness, accompanied the

"Will General Wilson think I should have waited for him?" he shouted. The words were jolted out of him as

he rose in the saddle. The noise of the ponies' hoofs made conversation difficult. I shouted back that the

presence of General Ernst in the town made it quite proper for a foreign attache to enter it.

"It must have surrendered by now," I shouted. "It's been half an hour since Ernst crossed the bridge."

At these innocent words, all my companions tugged violently at their bridles and shouted "Whoa!"

"Crossed the bridge?" they yelled. "There is no bridge! The bridge is blown up! If he hasn't crossed by the

But by now the Porto Rican ponies had decided that this was the race of their lives, and each had made up his

mind that, Mexican bit or no Mexican bit, until he had carried his rider first into the town of Coamo, he

would not be halted. As I tugged helplessly at my Mexican bit, I saw how I had made my mistake. The

volunteers, on finding the bridge destroyed, instead of marching upon Coamo had turned to the ford, the same

ford which we had crossed half an hour before they reached it. They now were behind us. Instead of a town

which had surrendered to a thousand American soldiers, we, seven unarmed men and Jimmy, were being

"If we get into trouble with the General for this," they shouted, "it will be your fault. You told us Ernst was in

I shouted back that no one regretted the fact that he was not more keenly than I did myself.

"We might as well go in," they shouted, "and take it anyway!" I decided that Titus and Breckenridge were

"If you officers go in," they cried, "the General can't blame us," and they dug their spurs into the ponies.

"Wait!" shouted Her Majesty's representative. "That's all very well for you chaps, but what protects me if the

But Paget's pony refused to consider the feelings of the Lords of the Admiralty. As successfully Paget might

have tried to pull back a rowboat from the edge of Niagara. And, moreover, Millard, in order that Jimmy

might be the first to reach Ponce with despatches, had mounted him on the fastest pony in the bunch, and he

already was far in the lead. His sporting instincts, nursed in the poolrooms of the Tenderloin and at

Guttenburg, had sent him three lengths to the good. It never would do to have a newsboy tell in New York

that he had beaten the correspondents of the papers he sold in the streets; nor to permit commissioned officers

to take the dust of one who never before had ridden on anything but a cable car. So we all raced forward and,

bunched together, swept into the main street of Coamo. It was gratefully empty. There were no American

soldiers, but, then, neither were there any Spanish soldiers. Across the street stretched more riflepits and

barricades of iron pipes, but in sight there was neither friend nor foe. On the stones of the deserted street the

galloping hoofs sounded like the advance of a whole regiment of cavalry. Their clatter gave us a most

comfortable feeling. We almost could imagine the townspeople believing us to be the Rough Riders

And then, the empty street seemed to threaten an ambush. We thought hastily of sunken mines, of soldiers

crouching behind the barriers, behind the houses at the next corner, of Mausers covering us from the latticed

balconies overhead. Until at last, when the silence had become alert and menacing, a lonely man dashed into

the middle of the street, hurled a white flag in front of us, and then dived headlong under the porch of a

house. The next instant, as though at a signal, a hundred citizens, each with a white flag in both hands, ran

from cover, waving their banners, and gasping in weak and terrorshaken tones, "Vivan los Americanos."

We tried to pull up, but the ponies had not yet settled among themselves which of us had won, and carried us

to the extreme edge of the town, where a precipice seemed to invite them to stop, and we fell off into the

arms of the Porto Ricans. They brought us wine in tin cans, cigars, borne in the aprons and mantillas of their

women folk, and demijohns of native rum. They were abject, trembling, tearful. They made one instantly

One of them spoke to me the few words of Spanish with which I had an acquaintance. He told me he was the

Alcalde, and that he begged to surrender into my hands the town of Coamo. I led him instantly to one side. I

was afraid that if I did not take him up he would surrender to Paget or to Jimmy. I bade him conduct me to

his official residence. He did so, and gave me the key to the cartel, a staff of office of gold and ebony, and the

flag of the town, which he had hidden behind his writingdesk. It was a fine Spanish flag with the coat of

arms embroidered in gold. I decided that, with whatever else I might part, that flag would always be mine,

that the chance of my again receiving the surrender of a town of five thousand people was slender, and that

this token would be wrapped around me in my coffin. I accordingly hid it in my poncho and strapped it to my

saddle. Then I appointed a hotelkeeper, who spoke a little English, as my official interpreter, and told the

Alcalde that I was now Military Governor, Mayor, and Chief of Police, and that I wanted the seals of the

town. He gave me a rubber stamp with a coat of arms cut in it, and I wrote myself three letters, which, to

insure their safe arrival, I addressed to three different places, and stamped them with the rubber seals. In time

all three reached me, and I now have them as documentary proof of the fact that for twenty minutes I was

During that brief administration I detailed Titus and Breckenridge to wigwag the Sixteenth Pennsylvania that

we had taken the town, and that it was now safe for them to enter. In order to compromise Paget they used his

red silk handkerchief. Root I detailed to conciliate the inhabitants by drinking with every one of them. He

tells me he carried out my instructions to the letter. I also settled one assault and battery case, and put the

chief offender under arrest. At least, I told the official interpreter to inform him that he was under arrest, but

as I had no one to guard him he grew tired of being under arrest and went off to celebrate his emancipation

My administration came to an end in twenty minutes, when General Wilson rode into Coamo at the head of

his staff and three thousand men. He wore a white helmet, and he looked the part of the conquering hero so

satisfactorily that I forgot I was Mayor and ran out into the street to snap a picture of him. He looked greatly

surprised and asked me what I was doing in his town. The tone in which he spoke caused me to decide that,

after all, I would not keep the flag of Coamo. I pulled it off my saddle and said: "General, it's too long a story

to tell you now, but here is the flag of the town. It's the first Spanish flag"and it was"that has been

General Wilson smiled again and accepted the flag. He and about four thousand other soldiers think it

belongs to them. But the truth will out. Some day the bestowal on the proper persons of a vote of thanks from

Congress, a pension, or any other trifle, like prizemoney, will show the American people to whom that flag

I know that in time the glorious deed of the seven heroes of Coamo, or eight, if you include "Jimmy," will be

When I was a boy I thought battles were fought in waste places selected for the purpose. I argued from the

fact that when our school nine wished to play ball it was forced into the suburbs to search for a vacant lot. I

thought opposing armies also marched out of town until they reached some desolate spot where there were no

window panes, and where their cannonballs would hurt no one but themselves. Even later, when I saw

battles fought among villages, artillery galloping through a cornfield, garden walls breached for rifle fire, and

farmhouses in flames, it always seemed as though the generals had elected to fight in such surroundings

through an inexcusable striving after theatrical effectas though they wished to furnish the war

correspondents with a chance for descriptive writing. With the horrors of war as horrible as they are without

any aid from these contrasts, their presence always seemed not only sinful but bad art; as unnecessary as

There are so many places which are scenes set apart for battles places that look as though Nature had

condemned them for just such sacrifices. Colenso, with its bare kopjes and great stretch of veldt, is one of

these, and so, also, is Spion Kop, and, in Manchuria, Nan Shan Hill. The photographs have made all of us

familiar with the vast, desolate approaches to Port Arthur. These are among the waste places of the

earthbarren, deserted, fit meeting grounds only for men whose object in life for the moment is to kill men.

Were you shown over one of these places, and told, "A battle was fought here," you would answer, "Why, of

But down in Cuba, outside of Santiago, where the United States army fought its solitary and modest battle

with Spain, you might many times pass by San Juan Hill and think of it, if you thought of it at all, as only a

pretty site for a bungalow, as a place obviously intended for orchards and gardens.

On July 1st, twelve years ago, when the American army came upon it out of the jungle the place wore a

partial disguise. It still was an irregular ridge of smiling, sunny hills with fat, comfortable curves, and in some

places a steep, straight front. But above the steepest, highest front frowned an aggressive blockhouse, and

on all the slopes and along the skyline were rows of yellow trenches, and at the base a cruel cat's cradle of

barbed wire. It was like the face of a pretty woman behind the bars of a visor. I find that on the day of the

fight twelve years ago I cabled my paper that San Juan Hill reminded the Americans of "a sunny orchard in

New England." That was how it may have looked when the regulars were climbing up the steep front to

capture the blockhouse, and when the cavalry and Rough Riders, having taken Kettle Hill, were running

down its opposite slope, past the lake, to take that crest of San Juan Hill which lies to the right of the

blockhouse. It may then have looked like a sunny New England orchard, but before night fell the

intrenching tools had lent those sunny slopes "a fierce and terrible aspect." And after that, hour after hour,

and day after day, we saw the hill eaten up by our trenches, hidden by a vast laundry of shelter tents, and torn

apart by bombproofs, their jutting roofs of logs and broken branches weighed down by earth and stones and

looking like the pit mouths to many mines. That probably is how most of the American army last saw San

Juan Hill, and that probably is how it best remembers itas a fortified camp. That was twelve years ago.

When I revisited it, San Juan Hill was again a sunny, smiling farm land, the trenches planted with vegetables,

the roofs of the bombproofs fallen in and buried beneath creeping vines, and the barbedwire entanglements

San Juan Hill is not a solitary hill, but the most prominent of a ridge of hills, with Kettle Hill a quarter of a

mile away on the edge of the jungle and separated from the ridge by a tiny lake. In the local nomenclature

Kettle Hill, which is the name given to it by the Rough Riders, has always been known as San Juan Hill, with

The days we spent on those hills were so rich in incident and interest and were filled with moments of such

excitement, of such pride in one's fellowcountrymen, of pity for the hurt and dying, of laughter and

goodfellowship, that one supposed he might return after even twenty years and recognize every detail of the

ground. But a shorter time has made startling and confusing changes. Now a visitor will find that not until

after several different visits, and by walking and riding foot by foot over the hills, can he make them fall into

line as he thinks he once knew them. Immediately around San Juan Hill itself there has been some attempt

made to preserve the ground as a public park. A barbedwire fence, with a gateway, encircles the

blockhouse, which has been converted into a home for the caretaker of the park, and then, skirting the road

to Santiago to include the tree under which the surrender was arranged, stretches to the left of the

blockhouse to protect a monument. This monument was erected by Americans to commemorate the battle.

It is now rapidly falling to pieces, but there still is enough of it intact to show the pencilled scribblings and

autographs of tourists who did not take part in the battle, but who in this public manner show that they

approve of its results. The public park is less than a quarter of a mile square. Except for it no other effort has

been made either by Cubans or Americans to designate the lines that once encircled and menaced Santiago,

and Nature, always at her best under a tropical sun, has done all in her power to disguise and forever

obliterate the scene of the army's one battle. Those features which still remain unchanged are very few. The

Treaty Tree, now surrounded by a tall fence, is one, the blockhouse is another. The little lake in which, even

when the bullets were dropping, the men used to bathe and wash their clothes, the big iron sugar kettle that

gave a new name to Kettle Hill, and here and there a trench hardly deeper than a ploughed furrow, and nearly

Of the camps of Generals Chaffee, Lawton, Bates, Sumner, and Wheeler, of Colonels Leonard Wood and

Theodore Roosevelt, there are but the slightest traces. The Bloody Bend, as some call it, in the San Juan

River, as some call that stream, seems to have entirely disappeared. At least, it certainly was not where it

should have been, and the place the hotel guides point out to unsuspecting tourists bears not the slightest

physical resemblance to that ford. In twelve years, during one of which there has been in Santiago the most

severe rainfall in sixty years, the San Juan stream has carried away its banks and the trees that lined them, and

the trails that should mark where the ford once crossed have so altered and so many new ones have been

added, that the exact location of the once famous dressing station is now most difficult, if not impossible, to

determine. To establish the sites of the old camping grounds is but little less difficult. The headquarters of

General Wheeler are easy to recognize, for the reason that the place selected was in a hollow, and the most

unhealthy spot along the five miles of intrenchments. It is about thirty yards from where the road turns to rise

over the ridge to Santiago, and all the water from the hill pours into it as into a rain barrel. It was here that

Troop G, Third Cavalry, under Major Hardee, as it was Wheeler's escort, was forced to bivouac, and where

onethird of its number came down with fever. The camp of General Sam Sumner was some sixty yards to

the right of the head quarters of General Wheeler, on the high shoulder of the hill just above the camp of the

engineers, who were on the side of the road opposite. The camps of Generals Chaffee, Lawton, Hawkins,

Ludlow, and the positions and trenches taken and held by the different regiments under them one can place

only relatively. One reason for this is that before our army attacked the hills all the underbrush and small

trees that might conceal the advance of our men had been cleared away by the Spaniards, leaving the hill,

except for the high crest, comparatively bare. Today the hills are thick with young trees and enormous

bushes. The alteration in the landscape is as marked as is the difference between ground cleared for golf and

Of all the camps, the one that today bears the strongest evidences of its occupation is that of the Rough

Riders. A part of the camp of that regiment, which was situated on the ridge some hundred feet from the

Santiago road, was pitched under a clump of shade trees, and to day, even after seven years, the trunks of

these trees bear the names and initials of the men who camped beneath them. {4} These men will remember

that when they took this hill they found that the fortifications beneath the trees were partly made from the

foundations of an adobe house. The red tiles from its roof still litter the ground. These tiles and the names cut

in the bark of the trees determine absolutely the site of onehalf of the camp, but the other half, where stood

Tiffany's quickfiring gun and Parker's Gatling, has been almost obliterated. The tree under which Colonel

pitched his tent I could not discover, and the trenches in which he used to sit with his officers and with the

officers from the regiments of the regular army are now levelled to make a kitchen garden. Sometimes the

exPresident is said to have too generously given office and promotion to the friends he made in Cuba. These

men he met in the trenches were then not necessarily his friends. Today they are not necessarily his friends.

They are the men the free life of the riflepits enabled him to know and to understand as the settled relations

of home life and peace would never have permitted. At that time none of them guessed that the "amateur

colonel," to whom they talked freely as to a comrade, would be their Commanderin Chief. They did not

suspect that he would become even the next Governor of New York, certainly not that in a few years he

would be the President of the United States. So they showed themselves to him frankly, unconsciously. They

criticised, argued, disagreed, and he became familiar with the views, character, and worth of each, and

remembered. The seeds planted in those halfobliterated trenches have borne greater results than ever will

The kitchengarden is immediately on the crest of the hill, and near it a Cuban farmer has built a shack of

mud and twigs and cultivated several acres of land. On Kettle Hill there are three more such shacks, and over

all the hills the new tenants have strung stout barbedwire fences and made new trails and reared wooden

gateways. It was curious to find how greatly these modern improvements confused one's recollection of the

landscape, and it was interesting, also, to find how the presence on the hills of 12,000 men and the excitement

During the fight I walked along a portion of the Santiago road, and for many years I always have thought of

that walk as extending over immense distances. It started from the top of San Juan Hill beside the

blockhouse, where I had climbed to watch our artillery in action. By a mistake, the artillery had been sent

there, and it remained exposed on the crest only about three minutes. During that brief moment the black

powder it burned drew upon it the fire of every rifle in the Spanish line. To load his piece, each of our men

was forced to crawl to it on his stomach, rise on one elbow in order to shove in the shell and lock the breech,

and then, still flat on the ground, wriggle below the crest. In the three minutes three men were wounded and

two killed; and the guns were withdrawn. I also withdrew. I withdrew first. Indeed, all that happened after the

first three seconds of those three minutes is hearsay, for I was in the Santiago road at the foot of the hill and

retreating briskly. This road also was under a crossfire, which made it stretch in either direction to an

interminable distance. I remember a government teamster driving a Studebaker wagon filled with

ammunition coming up at a gallop out of this interminable distance and seeking shelter against the base of the

hill. Seated beside him was a small boy, freckled and sunburned, a stowaway from one of the transports. He

was grandly happy and excited, and his only fear was that he was not "under fire." From our coign of safety,

with our backs to the hill, the teamster and I assured him that, on that point, he need feel no morbid doubt.

But until a bullet embedded itself in the blue board of the wagon he was not convinced. Then with his

jackknife he dug it out and shouted with pleasure. "I guess the folks will have to believe I was in a battle

now," he said. That coign of safety ceasing to be a coign of safety caused us to move on in search of another,

and I came upon Sergeant Borrowe blocking the road with his dynamite gun. He and his brother and three

regulars were busily correcting a hitch in its mechanism. An officer carrying an order along the line halted his

"That must be the dynamite gun I have heard so much about," he shouted. Borrowe saluted and shouted

"I'd like to see you fire it once," he said eagerly. Borrowe, delighted at the chance to exhibit his toy to a

"In just a moment, sir," he said; "this shell seems to have jammed a bit." The officer, for the first time seeing

the shell stuck in the breech, hurriedly gathered up his reins. He seemed to be losing interest. With elaborate

Until last year, when I again met young Borrowe gayly disporting himself at a lawntennis tournament at

Mattapoisett, I did not know whether his brother's method of removing dynamite with an axe had been

At the turn of the road I found Colonel Leonard Wood and a group of Rough Riders, who were busily

intrenching. At the same moment Stephen Crane came up with "Jimmy" Hare, the man who has made the

RussianJapanese War famous. Crane walked to the crest and stood there as sharply outlined as a semaphore,

observing the enemy's lines, and instantly bringing upon himself and us the fire of many Mausers. With every

one else, Wood was crouched below the crest and shouted to Crane to lie down. Crane, still standing, as

though to get out of earshot, moved away, and Wood again ordered him to lie down.

"You're drawing the fire on these men," Wood commanded. Although the heatit was the 1st of July in the

tropicswas terrific, Crane wore a long India rubber raincoat and was smoking a pipe. He appeared as cool

as though he were looking down from a box at a theatre. I knew that to Crane, anything that savored of a pose

was hateful, so, as I did not want to see him killed, I called, "You're not impressing any one by doing that,

Crane." As I hoped he would, he instantly dropped to his knees. When he crawled over to where we lay, I

explained, "I knew that would fetch you," and he grinned, and said, "Oh, was that it?"

A captain of the cavalry came up to Wood and asked permission to withdraw his troop from the top of the hill

to a trench forty feet below the one they were in. "They can't possibly live where they are now," he explained,

"and they're doing no good there, for they can't raise their heads to fire. In that lower trench they would be out

"Yes," said Wood, "but all the other men in the first trench would see them withdraw, and the moral effect

would be bad. They needn't attempt to return the enemy's fire, but they must not retreat."

The officer looked as though he would like to argue. He was a West Point graduate and a fullfledged captain

in the regular army. To him, Wood, in spite of his volunteer rank of colonel, which that day, owing to the

illness of General Young, had placed him in command of a brigade, was still a doctor. But discipline was

strong in him, and though he looked many things, he rose from his knees and grimly saluted. But at that

moment, without waiting for the permission of any one, the men leaped out of the trench and ran. It looked as

though they were going to run all the way to the sea, and the sight was sickening. But they had no intention of

running to the sea. They ran only to the trench forty feet farther down and jumped into it, and instantly

turning, began pumping lead at the enemy. Since five that morning Wood had been running about on his feet,

his clothes stuck to him with sweat and the mud and water of forded streams, and as he rose he limped

slightly. "My, but I'm tired!" he said, in a tone of the most acute surprise, and as though that fact was the only

one that was weighing on his mind. He limped over to the trench in which the men were now busily firing off

their rifles and waved a ridingcrop he carried at the trench they had abandoned. He was standing as Crane

had been standing, in silhouette against the skyline. "Come back, boys," we heard him shouting. "The other

men can't withdraw, and so you mustn't. It looks bad. Come on, get out of that!" What made it more amusing

was that, although Wood had, like every one else, discarded his coat and wore a strange uniform of gray shirt,

white ridingbreeches, and a cowboy Stetson, with no insignia of rank, not even straps pinned to his shirt,

still the men instantly accepted his authority. They looked at him on the crest of the hill, waving his stick

persuasively at the gravelike trench at his feet, and then with a shout scampered back to it.

After that, as I had a bad attack of sciatica and no place to sleep and nothing to eat, I accepted Crane's offer of

a blanket and coffee at his bivouac near El Poso. On account of the sciatica I was not able to walk fast, and,

although for over a mile of the way the trail was under fire, Crane and Hare each insisted on giving me an

arm, and kept step with my stumblings. Whenever I protested and refused their sacrifice and pointed out the

risk they were taking they smiled as at the ravings of a naughty child, and when I lay down in the road and

refused to budge unless they left me, Crane called the attention of Hare to the effect of the setting sun behind

the palmtrees. To the reader all these little things that one remembers seem very little indeed, but they were

vivid at the moment, and I have always thought of them as stretching over a long extent of time and territory.

Before I revisited San Juan I would have said that the distance along the road from the point where I left the

artillery to where I joined Wood was threequarters of a mile. When I paced it later I found the distance was

about seventyfive yards. I do not urge my stupidity or my extreme terror as a proof that others would be as

greatly confused, but, if only for the sake of the stupid ones, it seems a pity that the landmarks of San Juan

should not be rescued from the jungle, and a few signposts placed upon the hills. It is true that the great

battles of the Civil War and those of the one in Manchuria, where the men killed and wounded in a day

outnumber all those who fought on both sides at San Juan, make that battle read like a skirmish. But the

Spanish War had its results. At least it made Cuba into a republic, and so enriched or burdened us with

colonies that our republic changed into something like an empire. But I do not urge that. It will never be

because San Juan changed our foreign policy that people will visit the spot, and will send from it picture

postal cards. The human interest alone will keep San Juan alive. The men who fought there came from every

State in our country and from every class of our social life. We sent there the best of our regular army, and

with them, cowboys, clerks, bricklayers, football players, three future commanders of the greater army that

followed that war, the future Governor of Cuba, future commanders of the Philippines, the commander of our

forces in China, a future President of the United States. And, whether these men, when they returned to their

homes again, became clerks and millionaires and dentists, or rose to be presidents and mounted policemen,

they all remember very kindly the days they lay huddled together in the trenches on that hot and glaring

skyline. And there must be many more besides who hold the place in memory. There are few in the United

States so poor in relatives and friends who did not in his or her heart send a substitute to Cuba. For these it

seems as though San Juan might be better preserved, not as it is, for already its aspect is too far changed to

wish for that, but as it was. The efforts already made to keep the place in memory and to honor the Americans

who died there are the public park which I have mentioned, the monument on San Juan, and one other

monument at Guasimas to the regulars and Rough Riders who were killed there. To these monuments the

Society of Santiago will add four more, which will mark the landing place of the army at Daiquairi and the

But I believe even more than this might be done to preserve to the place its proper values. These values are

sentimental, historical, and possibly to the military student, educational. If today there were erected at

Daiquairi, Siboney, Guasimas, El Poso, El Caney, and on and about San Juan a dozen iron or bronze tablets

that would tell from where certain regiments advanced, what posts they held, how many or how few were the

men who held those positions, how near they were to the trenches of the enemy, and by whom these men

were commanded, I am sure the place would reconstruct itself and would breathe with interest, not only for

the returning volunteer, but for any casual tourist. As it is, the history of the fight and the reputation of the

men who fought is now at the mercy of the caretaker of the park and the Cuban "guides" from the hotel. The

caretaker speaks only Spanish, and, considering the amount of misinformation the guides disseminate, it is a

pity when they are talking to Americans, they are not forced to use the same language. When last I visited it,

Carlos Portuondo was the official guardian of San Juan Hill. He is an aged Cuban, and he fought through the

Ten Years' War, but during the last insurrection and the SpanishAmerican War he not only was not near San

Juan, but was not even on the Island of Cuba. He is a charming old person, and so is his aged wife. Their

chief concern in life, when I saw them, was to sell me a pair of breeches made of palmfibre which Carlos

had worn throughout the entire ten years of battle. The vicissitudes of those trousers he recited to me in great

detail, and he very properly regarded them as of historic value. But of what happened at San Juan he knew

nothing, and when I asked him why he held his present post and occupied the BlockHouse, he said, "To

keep the cows out of the park." When I asked him where the Americans had camped, he pointed carefully

from the back door of the BlockHouse to the foot of his kitchengarden. I assured him that under no stress

of terror could the entire American army have been driven into his back yard, and pointed out where it had

stretched along the ridge of hills for five miles. He politely but unmistakably showed that he thought I was a

liar. From the Venus Hotel there were two guides, old Casanova and Jean Casanova, his languid and

goodnatured son, a youth of sixteen years. Old Casanova, like most Cubans, is not inclined to give much

credit for what they did in Cuba to the Americans. After all, he says, they came only just as the Cubans

themselves were about to conquer the Spaniards, and by a lucky chance received the surrender and then

claimed all the credit. As other Cubans told me, "Had the Americans left us alone a few weeks longer, we

would have ended the war." How they were to have taken Havana, and sunk Cervera's fleet, and why they

were not among those present when our men charged San Juan, I did not inquire. Old Casanova, again like

other Cubans, ranks the fighting qualities of the Spaniard much higher than those of the American. This is

only human. It must be annoying to a Cuban to remember that after he had for three years fought the

Spaniard, the Yankee in eight weeks received his surrender and began to ship him home. The way Casanova

"The Americans thought they could capture El Caney in one day, but the brave General Toral fought so good

that it was six days before the Americans could make the Spaniards surrender." The statement is correct

except as regards the length of time during which the fight lasted. The Americans did make the mistake of

thinking they could eat up El Caney in an hour and then march through it to San Juan. Owing to the splendid

courage of Toral and his few troops our soldiers, under two of our best generals, were held in check from

seven in the morning until two in the afternoon. But the difference between seven hours of one day and six

days is considerable. Still, at present at San Juan that is the sort of information upon which the patriotic and

Young Casanova, the only other authority in Santiago, is not so sure of his facts as is his father, and is willing

to learn. He went with me to hold my pony while I took the photographs that accompany this article, and I

listened with great interest to his accounts of the battle. Finally he made a statement that was correct. "How

"Yesterday," he said, "I guided Colonel Hayes here, and while I guided him he explained it to me."

"Were you the stationmaster here before this?" I asked the man in the straw hat, at Colenso. "I mean before

"No fear!" snorted the stationmaster, scornfully. "Why, we didn't know Colenso was on the line until Buller

fought a battle here. That's how it is with all these waystations now. Everybody's talking about them. We

And yet the arriving stranger might have been forgiven his point of view and his start of surprise when he

found Chieveley a place of only a half dozen corrugated zinc huts, and Colenso a scattered gathering of a

Chieveley seemed so insignificant in contrast with its fame to those who had followed the war on maps and

in the newspapers, that one was not sure he was on the right road until he saw from the carwindow the

armored train still lying on the embankment, the graves beside it, and the donga into which Winston

And as the train bumped and halted before the blue and white enamel sign that marks Colenso station, the

places which have made that spot familiar and momentous fell into line like the buoys which mark the

We knew that the high bare ridge to the right must be Fort Wylie, that the plain on the left was where Colonel

Long had lost his artillery, and three officers gained the Victoria Cross, and that the swift, muddy stream, in

Six hours before, at Frere Station, the stationmaster had awakened us to say that Ladysmith would be

relieved at any moment. This had but just come over the wire. It was "official." Indeed, he added, with local

pride, that the village band was still awake and in readiness to celebrate the imminent event. He found, I fear,

an unsympathetic audience. The train was carrying philanthropic gentlemen in charge of stores of champagne

and marmalade for the besieged city. They did not want it to be relieved until they were there to substitute

pate de foie gras for horseflesh. And there were officers, too, who wanted a "look in," and who had been kept

waiting at Cape Town for commissions, gladdening the guests of the Mount Nelson Hotel the while with their

new khaki and gaiters, and there were Tommies who wanted "Relief of Ladysmith" on the claps of their

medals, as they had seen "Relief of Lucknow" on the medals of the Chelsea pensioners. And there was a

correspondent who had journeyed 15,000 miles to see Ladysmith relieved, and who was apparently going to

We all growled "That's good," as we had done for the last two weeks every time we had heard it was relieved,

but our tone was not enthusiastic. And when the captain of the Natal Carbineers said, "I am afraid the good

We had seen nothing yet that was like real war. That night at Pietermaritzburg the officers at the hotel were in

messjackets, the officers' wives in dinnergowns. It was like Shepheard's Hotel, at the top of the season. But

only six hours after that dinner, as we looked out of the carwindows, we saw galloping across the high

grass, like men who had lost their way, and silhouetted black against the red sunrise, countless horsemen

scouting ahead of our train, and guarding it against the fate of the armored one lying wrecked at Chieveley.

The darkness was still heavy on the land and the only lights were the red eyes of the armored train creeping in

advance of ours, and the red sun, which showed our silent escort appearing suddenly against the skyline on

a ridge, or galloping toward us through the dew to order us, with a wave of the hand, to greater speed. One

hour after sunrise the train drew up at Colenso, and from only a mile away we heard the heavy thud of the

naval guns, the hammering of the Boer "pompoms," and the Maxims and Colt automatics spanking the air.

We smiled at each other guiltily. We were on time. It was most evident that Ladysmith had not been relieved.

This was the twelfth day of a battle that Buller's column was waging against the Boers and their mountain

ranges, or "disarranges," as some one described them, without having gained more than three miles of hostile

territory. He had tried to force his way through them six times, and had been repulsed six times. And now he

No map, nor photograph, nor written description can give an idea of the country which lay between Buller

and his goal. It was an eruption of high hills, linked together at every point without order or sequence. In

most countries mountains and hills follow some natural law. The Cordilleras can be traced from the Amazon

River to Guatemala City; they make the watershed of two continents; the Great Divide forms the backbone

of the States, but these Natal hills have no lineal descent. They are illegitimate children of no line, abandoned

broadcast over the country, with no family likeness and no home. They stand alone, or shoulder to shoulder,

or at right angles, or at a tangent, or join hands across a valley. They never appear the same; some run to a

sharp point, some stretch out, forming a tableland, others are gigantic anthills, others perfect and

accurately modelled ramparts. In a ride of half a mile, every hill completely loses its original aspect and

They hide each other, or disguise each other. Each can be enfiladed by the other, and not one gives up the

secret of its strategic value until its crest has been carried by the bayonet. To add to this confusion, the river

Tugela has selected the hills around Ladysmith as occupying the country through which it will endeavor to

throw off its pursuers. It darts through them as though striving to escape, it doubles on its tracks, it sinks out

of sight between them, and in the open plain rises to the dignity of waterfalls. It runs uphill, and remains

motionless on an incline, and on the level ground twists and turns so frequently that when one says he has

crossed the Tugela, he means he has crossed it once at a drift, once at the wrecked railroad bridge, and once

over a pontoon. And then he is not sure that he is not still on the same side from which he started.

Some of these hills are green, but the greater part are a yellow or dark red, against which at two hundred

yards a man in khaki is indistinguishable from the rocks around him. Indeed, the khaki is the English soldier's

sole protection. It saves him in spite of himself, for he apparently cannot learn to advance under cover, and a

skyline is the one place where he selects to stand erect and stretch his weary limbs. I have come to within a

hundred yards of a hill before I saw that scattered among its red and yellow bowlders was the better part of a

regiment as closely packed together as the crowd on the bleaching boards at a baseball match.

Into this maze and confusion of nature's fortifications Buller's column has been twisting and turning,

marching and countermarching, capturing one position after another, to find it was enfiladed from many hills,

and abandoning it, only to retake it a week later. The greater part of the column has abandoned its tents and is

bivouacking in the open. It is a wonderful and impressive sight. At the first view, an army in being, when it is

spread out as it is in the Tugela basin back of the hills, seems a hopelessly and irrevocably entangled mob.

An army in the field is not regiments of armed men, marching with a gun on shoulder, or crouching behind

trenches. That is the least, even if it seems the most, important part of it. Before one reaches the firingline he

must pass villages of men, camps of men, bivouacs of men, who are feeding, mending, repairing, and burying

the men at the "front." It is these latter that make the mob of gypsies, which is apparently without head or

order or organization. They stretched across the great basin of the Tugela, like the children of Israel, their

campfires rising to the sky at night like the reflection of great searchlights; by day they swarmed across the

plain, like hundreds of moving circusvans in every direction, with as little obvious intention as herds of

buffalo. But each had his appointed work, and each was utterly indifferent to the battle going forward a mile

away. Hundreds of teams, of sixteen oxen each, crawled like great black watersnakes across the drifts, the

Kaffir drivers, naked and black, lashing them with whips as long as lariats, shrieking, beseeching, and

Mules from Spain and Texas, loaded with ammunition, kicked and plunged, more oxen drew more soberly

the great naval guns, which lurched as though in a heavy sea, throwing the bluejackets who hung upon the

dragropes from one high side of the trail to the other. Across the plain, and making toward the trail, wagons

loaded with fodder, with rations, with camp equipment, with tents and cooking stoves, crowded each other

as closely as cablecars on Broadway. Scattered among them were fixed lines of tethered horses, rows of

dogtents, camps of Kaffirs, hospital stations with the Red Cross waving from the nearest and highest tree.

Dripping watercarts with as many spigots as the regiment had companies, howitzer guns guided by as many

ropes as a Maypole, crowded past these to the trail, or gave way to the ambulances filled with men half

dressed and bound in the zincblue bandages that made the color detestable forever after. Troops of the

irregular horse gallop through this multitude, with a jangling of spurs and slingbelts; and Tommies, in close

order, fight their way among the oxen, or help pull them to one side as the stretchers pass, each with its

burden, each with its blue bandage stained a dark brownish crimson. It is only when the figure on the

stretcher lies under a blanket that the tumult and push and sweltering mass comes to a quick pause, while the

dead man's comrade stands at attention, and the officer raises his fingers to his helmet. Then the mass surges

on again, with cracking of whips and shouts and imprecations, while the yellow dust rises in thick clouds and

buries the picture in a glaring fog. This moving, struggling mass, that fights for the right of way along the

road, is within easy distance of the shells. Those from their own guns pass over them with a shrill crescendo,

those from the enemy burst among them at rare intervals, or sink impotently in the soft soil. And a dozen

Tommies rush to dig them out as keepsakes. Up at the front, brown and yellow regiments are lying crouched

behind brown and yellow rocks and stones. As far as you can see, the hills are sown with them. With a glass

you distinguish them against the skyline of every hill, for over three miles away. Sometimes the men rise

and fire, and there is a feverish flutter of musketry; sometimes they lie motionless for hours while the guns

Any one who has seen Epsom Downs on a Derby day, with its thousands of vans and tents and lines of horses

and moving mobs, can form some idea of what it is like. But while at the Derby all is interest and excitement,

and every one is pushing and struggling, and the air palpitates with the intoxication of a great event, the

winning of a horseracehere, where men are killed every hour and no one of them knows when his turn

may come, the fact that most impresses you is their indifference to it all. What strikes you most is the bored

air of the Tommies, the undivided interest of the engineers in the construction of a pontoon bridge, the

solicitude of the medical staff over the long lines of wounded, the rage of the naked Kaffirs at their lumbering

They are wearied with battles. The Tommies stretch themselves in the sun to dry the wet khaki in which they

have lain out in the cold night for weeks, and yawn at battles. Or, if you climb to the hill where the officers

are seated, you will find men steeped even deeper in boredom. They are burned a dark red; their brown

mustaches look white by contrast, theirs are the same faces you have met with in Piccadilly, which you see

across the tables of the Savoy restaurant, which gaze depressedly from the windows of White's and the

Bachelors' Club. If they were bored then, they are unbearably bored now. Below them the men of their

regiment lie crouched amid the bowlders, hardly distinguishable from the brown and yellow rock. They are

sleeping, or dozing, or yawning. A shell passes over them like the shaking of many telegraph wires, and

neither officer nor Tommy raises his head to watch it strike. They are tired in body and in mind, with

cramped limbs and aching eyes. They have had twelve nights and twelve days of battle, and it has lost its

When the sergeants call the companies together, they are eager enough. Anything is better than lying still

looking up at the sunny, inscrutable hills, or down into the plain crawling with black oxen.

Among the group of staff officers some one has lost a cigarholder. It has slipped from between his fingers,

and, with the vindictiveness of inanimate things, has slid and jumped under a pile of rocks. The interest of all

around is instantly centred on the lost cigarholder. The Tommies begin to roll the rocks away, endangering

the limbs of the men below them, and half the kopje is obliterated. They are as keen as terriers after a rat. The

officers sit above and give advice and disagree as to where that cigarholder hid itself. Over their heads, not

twenty feet above, the shells chase each other fiercely. But the officers have become accustomed to shells; a

search for a lost cigarholder, which is going on under their very eyes, is of greater interest. And when at last

a Tommy pounces upon it with a laugh of triumph, the officers look their disappointment, and, with a sigh of

It is all a question of familiarity. On Broadway, if a building is going up where there is a chance of a loose

brick falling on some one's head, the contractor puts up red signs marked "Danger!" and you dodge over to

the other side. But if you had been in battle for twelve days, as have the soldiers of Buller's column, passing

shells would interest you no more than do passing cablecars. After twelve days you would forget that shells

are dangerous even as you forget when crossing Broadway that cablecars can kill and mangle.

Up on the highest hill, seated among the highest rocks, are General Buller and his staff. The hill is all of

rocks, sharp, brown rocks, as clearly cut as foundationstones. They are thrown about at irregular angles, and

are shaded only by stiff bayonetlike cacti. Above is a blue glaring sky, into which the top of the kopje seems

to reach, and to draw and concentrate upon itself all of the sun's heat. This little jagged point of blistering

rocks holds the forces that press the button which sets the struggling mass below, and the thousands of men

upon the surrounding hills, in motion. It is the conning tower of the relief column, only, unlike a conning

tower, it offers no protection, no seclusion, no peace. Today, commanding generals, under the new

conditions which this war has developed, do not charge up hills waving flashing swords. They sit on rocks,

and wink out their orders by a flashing handmirror. The swords have been left at the base, or coated deep

with mud, so that they shall not flash, and with this column every one, under the rank of general, carries a

rifle on purpose to disguise the fact that he is entitled to carry a sword. The kopje is the central station of the

system. From its uncomfortable eminence the commanding general watches the developments of his attack,

and directs it by heliograph and ragged bits of bunting. A sweating, dirty Tommy turns his back on a hill a

mile away and slaps the air with his signal flag; another Tommy, with the front visor of his helmet cocked

over the back of his neck, watches an answering bit of bunting through a glass. The bit of bunting, a mile

away, flashes impatiently, once to the right and once to the left, and the Tommy with the glass says, "They

understand, sir," and the other Tommy, who has not as yet cast even an interested glance at the regiment he

has ordered into action, folds his flag and curls up against a hot rock and instantly sleeps.

Stuck on the crest, twenty feet from where General Buller is seated, are two iron rods, like those in the

puttinggreen of a golf course. They mark the line of direction which a shell must take, in order to seek out

the enemy. Back of the kopje, where they cannot see the enemy, where they cannot even see the hill upon

which he is intrenched, are the howitzers. Their duty is to aim at the iron rods, and vary their aim to either

side of them as they are directed to do by an officer on the crest. Their shells pass a few yards over the heads

of the staff, but the staff has confidence. Those three yards are as safe a margin as a hundred. Their

confidence is that of the lady in spangles at a musichall, who permits her husband in buckskin to shoot

apples from the top of her head. From the other direction come the shells of the Boers, seeking out the hidden

howitzers. They pass somewhat higher, crashing into the base of the kopje, sometimes killing, sometimes

digging their own ignominious graves. The staff regard them with the same indifference. One of them tears

the overcoat upon which Colonel StuartWortley is seated, another destroys his diary. His men, lying at his

feet among the red rocks, observe this with wide eyes. But he does not shift his position. His answer is, that

On Friday, February 23d, the Inniskillings, Dublins, and Connaughts were sent out to take a trench, halfway

up Railway Hill. The attack was one of those frontal attacks, which in this war, against the new weapons,

have added so much to the lists of killed and wounded and to the prestige of the men, while it has, in an

inverse ratio, hurt the prestige of the men by whom the attack was ordered. The result of this attack was

peculiarly disastrous. It was made at night, and as soon as it developed, the Boers retreated to the trenches on

the crest of the hill, and threw men around the sides to bring a cross fire to bear on the Englishmen. In the

morning the Inniskillings found they had lost four hundred men, and ten out of their fifteen officers. The

other regiments lost as heavily. The following Tuesday, which was the anniversary of Majuba Hill, three

brigades, instead of a regiment, were told off to take this same Railway Hill, or Pieter's, as it was later called,

on the flank, and with it to capture two others. On the same day, nineteen years before, the English had lost

Majuba Hill, and their hope was to take these three from the Boers for the one they had lost, and open the

way to Bulwana Mountain, which was the last bar that held them back from Ladysmith.

The first two of the three hills they wanted were shoulder to shoulder, the third was separated from them by a

deep ravine. This last was the highest, and in order that the attack should be successful, it was necessary to

seize it first. The hills stretched for three miles; they were about one thousand two hundred yards high.

For three hours a single line of men slipped and stumbled forward along the muddy bank of the river, and for

three hours the artillery crashed, spluttered, and stabbed at the three hills above them, scattering the rocks and

As is their custom, the Boers remained invisible and made no reply. And though we knew they were there, it

seemed inconceivable that anything human could live under such a bombardment of shot, bullets, and

shrapnel. A hundred yards distant, on our right, the navy guns were firing lyddite that burst with a thick

yellow smoke; on the other side Colt automatics were putputputing a stream of bullets; the fieldguns

and the howitzers were playing from a hill half a mile behind us, and scattered among the rocks about us, and

for two miles on either hand, the infantry in reserve were firing off ammunition at any part of the three hills

The roar of the navy's FourPointSevens, their crash, their rush as they passed, the shrill whine of the

shrapnel, the barking of the howitzers, and the mechanical, regular rattle of the quickfiring Maxims, which

sounded like the clicking of many mowingmachines on a hot summer's day, tore the air with such hideous

noises that one's skull ached from the concussion, and one could only be heard by shouting. But more

impressive by far than this hot chorus of mighty thunder and petty hammering, was the roar of the wind

which was driven down into the valley beneath, and which swept up again in enormous waves of sound. It

roared like a wild hurricane at sea. The illusion was so complete, that you expected, by looking down, to see

the Tugela lashing at her banks, tossing the spray hundreds of feet in air, and battling with her sides of rock.

It was like the roar of Niagara in a gale, and yet when you did look below, not a leaf was stirring, and the

The long procession of yellow figures was still advancing along the bottom of the valley, toward the right,

when on the crest of the farthermost hill fourteen of them appeared suddenly, and ran forward and sprang into

Perched against the blue sky on the highest and most distant of the three hills, they looked terribly lonely and

insufficient, and they ran about, this way and that, as though they were very much surprised to find

themselves where they were. Then they settled down into the Boer trench, from our side of it, and began

firing, their officer, as his habit is, standing up behind them. The hill they had taken had evidently been

abandoned to them by the enemy, and the fourteen men in khaki had taken it by "default." But they

disappeared so suddenly into the trench, that we knew they were not enjoying their new position in peace,

and every one looked below them, to see the arriving reinforcements. They came at last, to the number of ten,

and scampered about just as the others had done, looking for cover. It seemed as if we could almost hear the

singing of the bullet when one of them dodged, and it was with a distinct sense of relief, and of freedom from

further responsibility, that we saw the ten disappear also, and become part of the yellow stones about them.

Then a very wonderful movement began to agitate the men upon the two remaining hills. They began to creep

up them as you have seen seaweed rise with the tide and envelop a rock. They moved in regiments, but each

man was as distinct as is a letter of the alphabet in each word on this page, black with letters. We began to

follow the fortunes of individual letters. It was a most selfish and cowardly occupation, for you knew you

were in no greater danger than you would be in looking through the glasses of a mutoscope. The battle

unrolled before you like a panorama. The guns on our side of the valley had ceased, the hurricane in the

depths below had instantly spent itself, and the birds and insects had again begun to fill our hill with drowsy

twitter and song. But on the other, half the men were wrapping the base of the hill in khaki, which rose higher

and higher, growing looser and less tightly wrapt as it spun upward. Halfway to the crest there was a broad

open space of green grass, and above that a yellow bank of earth, which supported the track of the railroad.

This green space spurted with tiny geysers of yellow dust. Where the bullets came from or who sent them we

could not see. But the loose ends of the bandage of khaki were stretching across this green space and the

yellow spurts of dust rose all around them. The men crossed this fire zone warily, looking to one side or the

other, as the bullets struck the earth heavily, like drops of rain before a shower.

The men had their heads and shoulders bent as though they thought a roof was about to fall on them; some

ran from rock to rock, seeking cover properly; others scampered toward the safe vantageground behind the

railroad embankment; others advanced leisurely, like men playing golf. The silence, after the hurricane of

sounds, was painful; we could not hear even the Boer rifles. The men moved like figures in a dream, without

firing a shot. They seemed each to be acting on his own account, without unison or organization. As I have

said, you ceased considering the scattered whole, and became intent on the adventures of individuals. These

fell so suddenly, that you waited with great anxiety to learn whether they had dropped to dodge a bullet or

whether one had found them. The men came at last from every side, and from out of every ridge and

driedup waterway. Open spaces which had been green a moment before were suddenly dyed yellow with

them. Where a company had been clinging to the railroad embankment, there stood one regiment holding it,

and another sweeping over it. Heights that had seemed the goal, became the restingplace of the

stretcherbearers, until at last no part of the hill remained unpopulated, save a high bulging rampart of

unprotected and open ground. And then, suddenly, coming from the earth itself, apparently, one man ran

across this open space and leaped on top of the trench which crowned the hill. He was fully fifteen yards in

advance of all the rest, entirely unsupported, and alone. And he had evidently planned it so, for he took off

his helmet and waved it, and stuck it on his rifle and waved it again, and then suddenly clapped it on his head

and threw his gun to his shoulder. He stood so, pointing down into the trench, and it seemed as though we

A few minutes later the last of the three hills was mounted by the West Yorks, who were mistaken by their

own artillery for Boers, and fired upon both by the Boers and by their own shrapnel and lyddite. Four men

were wounded, and, to save themselves, a line of them stood up at full length on the trench and cheered and

waved at the artillery until it had ceased to play upon them. The Boers continued to fire upon them with rifles

for over two hours. But it was only a demonstration to cover the retreat of the greater number, and at

These hills were a part of the same Railway Hill which four nights before the Inniskillings and a composite

regiment had attempted to take by a frontal attack with the loss of six hundred men, among whom were three

colonels. By this flank attack, and by using nine regiments instead of one, the same hills and two others were

taken with two hundred casualties. The fact that this battle, which was called the Battle of Pieter's Hill, and

the surrender of General Cronje and his forces to Lord Roberts, both took place on the anniversary of the

battle of Majuba Hill, made the whole of Buller's column feel that the ill memory of that disaster had been

After the defeat of the Boers at the battle of Pieter's Hill there were two things left for them to do. They could

fall back across a great plain which stretched from Pieter's Hill to Bulwana Mountain, and there make their

last stand against Buller and the Ladysmith relief column, or they could abandon the siege of Ladysmith and

Bulwana Mountain is shaped like a brick and blocks the valley in which Ladysmith lies. The railroad track

slips around one end of the brick, and the Dundee trail around the other. It was on this mountain that the

Boers had placed their famous gun, Long Tom, with which they began the bombardment of Ladysmith, and

with which up to the day before Ladysmith was relieved they had thrown three thousand shells into that

If the Boers on retreating from Pieter's Hill had fortified this mountain with the purpose of holding off Buller

for a still longer time, they would have been under a fire from General White's artillery in the town behind

them and from Buller's naval guns in front. Their position would not have been unlike that of Humpty

Dumpty on the wall, so they wisely adopted the only alternative and slipped away. This was on Tuesday

night, while the British were hurrying up artillery to hold the hills they had taken that afternoon.

By ten o'clock the following morning from the top of Pieter's Hill you could still see the Boers moving off

along the Dundee road. It was an easy matter to follow them, for the dust hung above the trail in a yellow

cloud, like mist over a swamp. There were two opinions as to whether they were halting at Bulwana or

passing it, on their way to Laing's Neck. If they were going only to Bulwana there was the probability of two

weeks' more fighting before they could be dislodged. If they had avoided Bulwana, the way to Ladysmith

Lord Dundonald, who is in command of a brigade of irregular cavalry, was scouting to the left of Bulwana,

far in advance of our forces. At sunset he arrived, without having encountered the Boers, at the base of

Bulwana. He could either return and report the disappearance of the enemy or he could make a dash for it and

enter Ladysmith. His orders were "to go, look, see," and avoid an action, and the fact that none of his brigade

was in the triumphant procession which took place three days later has led many to think that in entering the

besieged town without orders he offended the commanding general. In any event, it is a family row and of no

interest to the outsider. The main fact is that he did make a dash for it, and just at sunset found himself with

two hundred men only a mile from the "Doomed City." His force was composed of Natal Carbiniers and

Imperial Light Horse. He halted them, and in order that honors might be even, formed them in sections with

the half sections made up from each of the two organizations. All the officers were placed in front, and with a

The wigwaggers on Convent Hill had already seen them, and the townspeople and the garrison were rushing

through the streets to meet them, cheering and shouting, and some of them weeping. Others, so officers tell

me, who were in the different camps, looked down upon the figures galloping across the plain in the twilight,

Just as they had reached the centre of the town, General Sir George White and his staff rode down from

headquarters and met the men whose coming meant for him life and peace and success. They were

advancing at a walk, with the cheering people hanging to their stirrups, clutching at their hands and hanging

General White's first greeting was characteristically unselfish and loyal, and typical of the British officer. He

gave no sign of his own in calculable relief, nor did he give to Caesar the things which were Caesar's. He did

not cheer Dundonald, nor Buller, nor the column which had rescued him and his garrison from present

starvation and probable imprisonment at Pretoria. He raised his helmet and cried, "We will give three cheers

for the Queen!" And then the general and the healthy, ragged, and sunburned troopers from the outside world,

the starved, feverridden garrison, and the starved, feverridden civilians stood with hats off and sang their

The column outside had been fighting steadily for six weeks to get Dundonald or any one of its force into

Ladysmith; for fourteen days it had been living in the open, fighting by night as well as by day, without halt

or respite; the garrison inside had been for four months holding the enemy at bay with the point of the

bayonet; it was famished for food, it was rotten with fever, and yet when the relief came and all turned out

It may be credulous in them or oldfashioned; but it is certainly very unselfish, and when you take their point

After the Queen every one else had his share of the cheering, and General White could not complain of the

heartiness with which they greeted him, he tried to make a speech in reply, but it was a brief one. He spoke of

how much they owed to General Buller and his column, and he congratulated his own soldiers on the defence

"I am very sorry, men," he said, "that I had to cut down your rations. II promise you I won't do it again."

Then he stopped very suddenly and whirled his horse's head around and rode away. Judging from the number

of times they told me of this, the fact that they had all but seen an English general give way to his feelings

seemed to have impressed the civilian mind of Ladysmith more than the entrance of the relief force. The men

having come in and demonstrated that the way was open, rode forth again, and the relief of Ladysmith had

taken place. But it is not the people cheering in the dark streets, nor General White breaking down in his

speech of welcome, which gives the note to the way the men of Ladysmith received their freedom. It is rather

the fact that as the two hundred battlestained and earthstained troopers galloped forward, racing to be the

first, and rising in their stirrups to cheer, the men in the hospital camps said, "Well, they're come at last, have

they?" and continued fussing over their fourth of a ration of tea. That gives the real picture of how Ladysmith

On the morning after Dundonald had ridden in and out of Ladysmith, two other correspondents and myself

started to relieve it on our own account. We did not know the way to Ladysmith, and we did not then know

whether or not the Boers still occupied Bulwana Mountain. But we argued that the chances of the Boers

having raised the siege were so good that it was worth risking their not having done so, and being taken

We carried all the tobacco we could pack in our saddlebags, and enough food for one day. My chief regret

was that my government, with true republican simplicity, had given me a passport, type written on a modest

sheet of notepaper and wofully lacking in impressive seals and coats of arms. I fancied it would look to Boer

eyes like one I might have forged for myself in the writingroom of the hotel at Cape Town.

We had ridden up Pieter's Hill and scrambled down on its other side before we learned that the night before

Dundonald had raised the siege. We learned this from long trains of artillery and regiments of infantry which

already were moving forward over the great plain which lies between Pieter's and Bulwana. We learned it

also from the silence of conscientious, dutiful correspondents, who came galloping back as we galloped

forward, and who made wide detours at sight of us, or who, when we hailed them, lashed their ponies over

the red rocks and pretended not to hear, each unselfishly turning his back on Ladysmith in the hope that he

might be the first to send word that the "Doomed City" was relieved. This would enable one paper to say that

it had the news "on the street" five minutes earlier than its hated rivals. We found that the rivalry of our

respective papers bored us. We condemned it as being childish and weak. London, New York, Chicago were

names, they were spots thousands of leagues away: Ladysmith was just across that mountain. If our horses

held out at the pace, we would beafter Dundonaldthe first men in. We imagined that we would see

hysterical women and starving men. They would wring our hands, and say, "God bless you," and we would

halt our steaming horses in the marketplace, and distribute the news of the outside world, and tobacco.

There would be shattered houses, roofless homes, deep pits in the roadways where the shells had burst and

buried themselves. We would see the entombed miner at the moment of his deliverance, we would be among

the first from the outer world to break the spell of his silence; the first to receive the brunt of the imprisoned

Indeed, it was clearly our duty to the papers that employed us that we should not send them news, but that we

should be the first to enter Ladysmith. We were surely the best judges of what was best to do. How like them

to try to dictate to us from London and New York, when we were on the spot! It was absurd. We shouted this

to each other as we raced in and out of the long confused column, lashing viciously with our whips. We

stumbled around pieces of artillery, slid in between dripping watercarts, dodged the horns of weary oxen,

scattered companies of straggling Tommies, and ducked under protruding tentpoles on the

baggagewagons, and at last came out together again in advance of the dusty column.

"Besides, we don't know where the presscensor is, do we?" No, of course we had no idea where the

presscensor was, and unless he said that Ladysmith was relieved, the fact that twentyfive thousand other

soldiers said so counted for idle gossip. Our papers could not expect us to go riding over mountains the day

Ladysmith was relieved, hunting for a presscensor. "That presscensor," gasped Hartland,

"neveriswhere heought to be." The words were bumped out of him as he was shot up and down in the

saddle. That was it. It was the presscensor's fault. Our consciences were clear now. If our papers worried

themselves or us because they did not receive the great news until every one else knew of it, it was all

because of that press censor. We smiled again and spurred the horses forward. We abused the presscensor

roundlywe were extremely indignant with him. It was so like him to lose himself the day Ladysmith was

relieved. "Confound him," we muttered, and grinned guiltily. We felt as we used to feel when we were

We were nearing Pieter's Station now, and were halfway to Ladysmith. But the van of the army was still

about us. Was it possible that it stretched already into the beleaguered city? Were we, after all, to be cheated

of the first and freshest impressions? The tall lancers turned at the sound of the horses' hoofs and stared,

infantry officers on foot smiled up at us sadly, they were dirty and dusty and sweating, they carried rifles and

cross belts like the Tommies; and they knew that we outsiders who were not under orders would see the

chosen city before them. Some of them shouted to us, but we only nodded and galloped on. We wanted to get

rid of them all, but they were interminable. When we thought we had shaken them off, and that we were at

last in advance, we would come upon a group of them resting on the same ground their shells had torn up

We passed Boer laagers marked by empty cans and broken saddles and black, cold campfires. At Pieter's

Station the blood was still fresh on the grass where two hours before some of the South African Light Horse

The Boers were still on Bulwana then? Perhaps, after all, we had better turn back and try to find that

presscensor. But we rode on and saw Pieter's Station, as we passed it, as an absurd relic of by gone days

when bridges were intact and trains ran on schedule time. One door seen over the shoulder as we galloped

past read, "Station Master's OfficePrivate," and in contempt of that stern injunction, which would make

even the firstclass passenger hesitate, one of our shells had knocked away the half of the door and made its

privacy a mockery. We had only to follow the track now and we would arrive in timeunless the Boers were

still on Bulwana. We had shaken off the army, and we were two miles in front of it, when six men came

galloping toward us in an unfamiliar uniform. They passed us far to the right, regardless of the trail, and

galloping through the high grass. We pulled up when we saw them, for they had green facings to their gray

We gave a yell in chorus. "Are you from Ladysmith?" we shouted. The men, before they answered, wheeled

and cheered, and came toward us laughing jubilant. "We're the first men out," cried the officer and we rode in

among them, shaking hands and offering our good wishes. "We're glad to see you," we said. "We're glad to

see YOU," they said. It was not an original greeting, but it seemed sufficient to all of us. "Are the Boers on

We parted at the word and started to go right in. We found the culverts along the railroad cut away and the

bridges down, and that galloping ponies over the roadbed of a railroad is a difficult feat at the best, even

Some men, cleanly dressed and rather palelooking, met us and said: "Goodmorning." "Are you from

Ladysmith?" we called. "No, we're from the neutral camp," they answered. We were the first men from

outside they had seen in four months, and that was the extent of their interest or information. They had put on

their best clothes, and were walking along the track to Colenso to catch a train south to Durban or to

Maritzburg, to any place out of the neutral camp. They might have been somnambulists for all they saw of us,

or of the Boer trenches and the battlefield before them. But we found them of greatest interest, especially

their clean clothes. Our column had not seen clean linen in six weeks, and the sight of these civilians in white

duck and straw hats, and carrying walkingsticks, coming toward us over the railroad ties, made one think it

We had been riding through a roofless tunnel, with the mountain and the great dam on one side, and the high

wall of the railway cutting on the other, but now just ahead of us lay the open country, and the exit of the

tunnel barricaded by twisted rails and heapedup ties and bags of earth. Bulwana was behind us. For eight

miles it had shut out the sight of our goal, but now, directly in front of us, was spread a great city of dirty

tents and grass huts and Red Cross flagsthe neutral campand beyond that, four miles away, shimmering

We gave a gasp of recognition and galloped into and through the neutral camp. Natives of India in great

turbans, Indian women in gay shawls and noserings, and black Kaffirs in discarded khaki looked up at us

dully from the earth floors of their huts, and when we shouted "Which way?" and "Where is the bridge?" only

After all, we thought, they are poor creatures, incapable of emotion. Perhaps they do not know how glad we

are that they have been rescued. They do not understand that we want to shake hands with everybody and

offer our congratulations. Wait until we meet our own people, we said, they will understand! It was such a

pleasant prospect that we whipped the unhappy ponies into greater bursts of speed, not because they needed

In our haste we lost our way among innumerable little trees; we disagreed as to which one of the many

crosstrails led home to the bridge. We slipped out of our stirrups to drag the ponies over one steep place,

and to haul them up another, and at last the right road lay before us, and a hundred yards ahead a short iron

bridge and a Gordon Highlander waited to welcome us, to receive our first greetings and an assorted

collection of cigarettes. Hartland was riding a thoroughbred polo pony and passed the gallant defender of

Ladysmith without a kind look or word, but Blackwood and I galloped up more decorously, smiling at him

with goodwill. The soldier, who had not seen a friend from the outside world in four months, leaped in front

"Halt, there," he cried. "Where's your pass?" Of course it showed excellent disciplinewe admired it

immensely. We even overlooked the fact that he should think Boer spies would enter the town by way of the

main bridge and at a gallop. We liked his vigilance, we admired his discipline, but in spite of that his

reception chilled us. We had brought several things with us that we thought they might possibly want in

Ladysmith, but we had entirely forgotten to bring a pass. Indeed I do not believe one of the twentyfive

thousand men who had been fighting for six weeks to relieve Ladysmith had supplied himself with one. The

night before, when the Ladysmith sentries had tried to halt Dundonald's troopers in the same way, and

We crossed the bridge soberly and entered Ladysmith at a walk. Even the ponies looked disconcerted and

crestfallen. After the high grass and the mountains of red rock, where there was not even a tent to remind one

of a rooftree, the stone cottages and shopwindows and chapels and wellordered hedges of the main street

of Ladysmith made it seem a wealthy and attractive suburb. When we entered, a Sabbath like calm hung

upon the town; officers in the smartest khaki and glistening Stowassers observed us askance, little girls in

white pinafores passed us with eyes cast down, a man on a bicycle looked up, and then, in terror lest we

might speak to him, glued his eyes to the wheel and "scorched" rapidly. We trotted forward and halted at each

street crossing, looking to the right and left in the hope that some one might nod to us. From the opposite end

of the town General Buller and his staff came toward us slowlythe housetops did not seem to swayit

was not "roses, roses all the way." The German army marching into Paris received as hearty a welcome.

"Why didn't you people cheer General Buller when he came in?" we asked later. "Oh, was that General

Buller?" they inquired. "We didn't recognize him." "But you knew he was a general officer, you knew he was

I decided that the bare fact of the relief of Ladysmith was all I would be able to wire to my neglected paper,

and with remorses started to find the Ladysmith censor. Two officers, with whom I ventured to break the

hush that hung upon the town by asking my way, said they were going in the direction of the censor. We rode

for some distance in guarded silence. Finally, one of them, with an inward struggle, brought himself to ask,

I was forced to admit that I was. I felt that I had taken an unwarrantable liberty in intruding on a besieged

garrison. I wanted to say that I had lost my way and had ridden into the town by mistake, and that I begged to

be allowed to withdraw with apologies. The other officer woke up suddenly and handed me a printed list of

the prices which had been paid during the siege for food and tobacco. He seemed to offer it as being in some

way an official apology for his starved appearance. The price of cigars struck me as especially pathetic, and I

commented on it. The first officer gazed mournfully at the blazing sunshine before him. "I have not smoked a

cigar in two months," he said. My surging sympathy, and my terror at again offending the haughty garrison,

combated so fiercely that it was only with a great effort that I produced a handful. "Will you have these?" The

other officer started in his saddle so violently that I thought his horse had stumbled, but he also kept his eyes

straight in front. "Thank you, I will take one if I mayjust one," said the first officer. "Are you sure I am not

robbing you?" They each took one, but they refused to put the rest of the cigars in their pockets. As the

printed list stated that a dozen matches sold for $1.75, I handed them a box of matches. Then a beautiful thing

happened. They lit the cigars and at the first taste of the smokeand they were not good cigarsan almost

human expression of peace and goodwill and utter abandonment to joy spread over their yellow skins and

cracked lips and feverlit eyes. The first man dropped his reins and put his hands on his hips and threw back

his head and shoulders and closed his eyelids. I felt that I had intruded at a moment which should have been

Another boy officer in stainless khaki and beautifully turned out, polished and burnished and varnished, but

with the same yellow skin and sharpened cheekbones and protruding teeth, a skeleton on horse back, rode

slowly toward us down the hill. As he reached us he glanced up and then swayed in his saddle, gazing at my

companions fearfully. "Good God," he cried. His brother officers seemed to understand, but made no answer,

except to jerk their heads toward me. They were too occupied to speak. I handed the skeleton a cigar, and he

took it in great embarrassment, laughing and stammering and blushing. Then I began to understand; I began

to appreciate the heroic selfsacrifice of the first two, who, when they had been given the chance, had refused

The censor was at his post, and a few minutes later a signal officer on Convent Hill heliographed my cable to

Bulwana, where, six hours after the Boers had abandoned it, Buller's own helios had begun to dance, and they

speeded the cable on its long journey to the newspaper office on the Thames Embankment.

When one descended to the streets againthere are only two streets which run the full length of the

townand looked for signs of the siege, one found them not in the shattered houses, of which there seemed

The cloak of indifference which every Englishman wears, and his instinctive dislike to make much of his

feelings, and, in this case, his pluck, at first concealed from us how terribly those who had been inside of

Ladysmith had suffered, and how near to the breaking point they were. Their faces were the real index to

Any one who had seen our men at Montauk Point or in the fever camp at Siboney needed no hospital list to

tell him of the pitiful condition of the garrison. The skin on their faces was yellow, and drawn sharply over

the brow and cheekbones; their teeth protruded, and they shambled along like old men, their voices ranging

from a feeble pipe to a deep whisper. In this pitiable condition they had been forced to keep nightwatch on

the hillcrests, in the rain, to lie in the trenches, and to work on fortifications and bombproofs. And they

were expected to do all of these things on what strength they could get from horsemeat, biscuits of the

toughness and composition of those that are fed to dogs, and on "mealies," which is what we call corn.

That first day in Ladysmith gave us a faint experience as to what the siege meant. The correspondents had

disposed of all their tobacco, and within an hour saw starvation staring them in the face, and raced through

the town to rob fellowcorrespondents who had just arrived. The newcomers in their turn had soon

distributed all they owned, and came tearing back to beg one of their own cigarettes. We tried to buy grass for

our ponies, and were met with pitying contempt; we tried to buy food for ourselves, and were met with open

scorn. I went to the only hotel which was open in the place, and offered large sums for a cup of tea.

"Put up your money," said the Scotchman in charge, sharply. "What's the good of your money? Can your

The great dramatic moment after the raising of the siege was the entrance into Ladysmith of the relieving

column. It was a magnificent, manly, and moving spectacle. You must imagine the dry, burning heat, the

fine, yellow dust, the white glare of the sunshine, and in the heat and glare and dust the great interminable

column of men in ragged khaki crowding down the main street, twentytwo thousand strong, cheering and

shouting, with the sweat running off their red faces and cutting little rivulets in the dust that caked their

cheeks. Some of them were so glad that, though in the heaviest marching order, they leaped up and down and

stepped out of line to dance to the music of the bagpipes. For hours they crowded past, laughing, joking, and

cheering, or staring ahead of them, with lips wide apart, panting in the heat and choking with the dust, but

It was a pitiful contrast which the two forces presented. The men of the garrison were in clean khaki,

pipeclayed and brushed and polished, but their tunics hung on them as loosely as the flag around its pole,

the skin on their cheekbones was as tight and as yellow as the belly of a drum, their teeth protruded through

parched, cracked lips, and hunger, fever, and suffering stared from out their eyes. They were so ill and so

feeble that the mere exercise of standing was too severe for their endurance, and many of them collapsed,

falling back to the sidewalk, rising to salute only the first troop of each succeeding regiment. This done, they

would again sink back and each would sit leaning his head against his musket, or with his forehead resting

heavily on his folded arms. In comparison the relieving column looked like giants as they came in with a

swinging swagger, their uniforms blackened with mud and sweat and bloodstains, their faces brilliantly

crimsoned and blistered and tanned by the dust and sun. They made a picture of strength and health and

aggressiveness. Perhaps the contrast was strongest when the battalion of the Devons that had been on foreign

service passed the "reserve" battalion which had come from England. The men of the two battalions had

parted five years before in India, and they met again in Ladysmith, with the men of one battalion lining the

streets, sick, hungry, and yellow, and the others, who had been fighting six weeks to reach it, marching

toward them, robust, redfaced, and cheering mightily. As they met they gave a shout of recognition, and the

men broke ranks and ran forward, calling each other by name, embracing, shaking hands, and punching each

other in the back and shoulders. It was a sight that very few men watched unmoved. Indeed, the whole three

hours was one of the most brutal assaults upon the feelings that it has been my lot to endure. One felt he had

been entirely lifted out of the politics of the war, and the question of the wrongs of the Boers disappeared

Early in the campaign, when his officers had blundered, General White had dared to write: "I alone am to

blame." But in this triumphal procession twentytwo thousand gentlemen in khaki wiped that line off the

slate, and wrote, "Well done, sir," in its place, as they passed before him through the town he had defended

The Boer "front" was at Brandfort, and, as Lord Roberts was advancing upon that place, one already saw in

the headlines, "The Battle of Brandfort." But before our train drew out of Pretoria Station we learned that

the English had just occupied Brandfort, and that the Boer front had been pushed back to Winburg.

We decided that Brandfort was an impossible position to hold anyway, and that we had better leave the train

at Winburg. We found some selfish consolation for the Boer repulse, in the fact that it shortened our railroad

journey by one day. The next morning when we awoke at the Vaal River Station the train despatcher

informed us that during the night the "Rooineks" had taken Winburg, and that the burghers were gathered at

We agreed not to go to Winburg, but to stop off at Smaaldel. We also agreed that Winburg was an impossible

position to hold. When at eleven o'clock the train reached Kroonstad, we learned than Lord Roberts was in

Smaaldel. It was then evident that if our train kept on and the British army kept on there would be a collision.

So we stopped at Kroonstad. In talking it over we decided that, owing to its situation, Smaaldel was an

The Sand River, which runs about forty miles south of Kroonstad, was the last place in the Free State at

which the burghers could hope to make a stand, and at the bridge where the railroad spans the river, and at a

drift ten miles lower down, the Boers and Free Staters had collected to the number of four thousand. Lord

Roberts and his advancing column, which was known to contain thirtyfive thousand men, were a few miles

distant from the opposite bank of the Sand River. There was an equal chance that the English would attempt

to cross at the drift or at the bridge. We thought they would cross at the drift, and stopped for the night at

Ventersburg, in comparison with Kroonstad, where we had left them rounding up stray burghers and hurrying

them to the firingline, and burning official documents in the streets, was calm.

Ventersburg was not destroying incriminating documents nor driving weary burghers from its solitary street.

It was making them welcome at Jones's Hotel. The sun had sunk an angry crimson, the sure sign of a bloody

battle on the morrow, and a full moon had turned the dusty street and the veldt into which it disappeared into

The American scouts had halted at Jones's Hotel, and the American proprietor was giving them drinks free.

Their cowboy spurs jingled on the floor of the barroom, on the boards of the verandas, on the stone floor of

the kitchen, and in the billiardroom, where they were playing pool as joyously as though the English were

not ten miles away. Grave, awkward burghers rode up, each in a cloud of dust, and leaving his pony to

wander in the street and his rifle in a corner, shook hands with every one solemnly, and asked for coffee.

Italians of Garibaldi's redshirted army, Swedes and Danes in semiuniform, Frenchman in high boots and

great sombreros, Germans with the sabre cuts on their cheeks that had been given them at the university, and

Russian officers smoking tiny cigarettes crowded the little dining room, and by the light of a smoky lamp

talked in many tongues of Spion Kop, Sannahspost, Fourteen Streams, and the battle on the morrow.

They were suntanned, dusty, stained, and many of them with wounds in bandages. They came from every

capital of Europe, and as each took his turn around the crowded table, they drank to the health of every

nation, save one. When they had eaten they picked up the pony's bridle from the dust and melted into the

moonlight with a wave of the hand and a "good luck to you." There were no bugles to sound "boots and

saddles" for them, no sergeants to keep them in hand, no officers to pay for their rations and issue orders.

Each was his own officer, his conscience was his buglecall, he gave himself orders. They were all equal, all

friends; the cowboy and the Russian Prince, the French socialist from La Villette or Montmartre, with a red

sash around his velveteen breeches, and the little French nobleman from the Cercle Royal who had never

before felt the sun, except when he had played lawn tennis on the Isle de Puteaux. Each had his bandolier and

rifle; each was minding his own business, which was the business of allto try and save the independence of

The presence of these foreigners, with rifle in hand, showed the sentiment and sympathies of the countries

from which they came. These men were Europe's real ambassadors to the Republic of the Transvaal. The

hundreds of thousands of their countrymen who had remained at home held toward the Boer the same

feelings, but they were not so strongly moved; not so strongly as to feel that they must go abroad to fight.

These foreigners were not the exception in opinion, they were only exceptionally adventurous, exceptionally

libertyloving. They were not soldiers of fortune, for the soldier of fortune fights for gain. These men receive

no pay, no emolument, no reward. They were the few who dared do what the majority of their countrymen in

At Jones's Hotel that night, at Ventersburg, it was as though a jury composed of men from all of Europe and

Outside in the moonlight in the dusty road two bearded burghers had halted me to ask the way to the house of

the commandant. Between them on a Boer pony sat a man, erect, slimwaisted, with wellset shoulders and

chin in air, one hand holding the reins high, the other with knuckles down resting on his hip. The Boer pony

he rode, nor the moonlight, nor the veldt behind him, could disguise his seat and pose. It was as though I had

been suddenly thrown back into London and was passing the cuirassed, gauntleted guardsman, motionless on

his black charger in the sentry gate in Whitehall. Only now, instead of a steel breastplate, he shivered through

his thin khaki, and instead of the high boots, his legs were wrapped in twisted putties.

"Early this morning. I was out scouting," he said. He spoke in a voice so well trained and modulated that I

But in the moonlight I could see him smile, whether at my mistake or because it was not a mistake I could not

He made a lonely figure in the night, his helmet marking him as conspicuously as a man wearing a high hat in

a church. From the billiardroom, where the American scouts were playing pool, came the click of the ivory

and loud, lighthearted laughter; from the veranda the sputtering of many strange tongues and the deep, lazy

voices of the Boers. There were Boers to the left of him, Boers to the right of him, pulling at their long,

He dismounted, and stood watching the crowd about him under half lowered eyelids, but as unmoved as

though he saw no one. He threw his arm over the pony's neck and pulled its head down against his chest and

"You are not tired, are you? No, you're not," he said. His voice was as kindly as though he were speaking to a

"Oh, but you can't be tired. What?" he whispered. "A little hungry, perhaps. Yes?" He seemed to draw much

comfort from his friend the pony, and the pony rubbed his head against the Englishman's shoulder.

"The commandant says he will question you in the morning. You will come with us to the jail now," his

captor directed. "You will find three of your people there to talk to. I will go bring a blanket for you, it is

Two days later he would have heard through the windows of Jones's Hotel the billiard balls still clicking

joyously, but the men who held the cues then would have worn helmets like his own.

The original Jones, the proprietor of Jones's Hotel, had fled. The man who succeeded him was also a refugee,

and the present manager was an American from Cincinnati. He had never before kept a hotel, but he confided

to me that it was not a bad business, as he found that on each drink sold he made a profit of a hundred per

cent. The proprietress was a lady from Brooklyn, her husband, another American, was a prisoner with Cronje

at St. Helena. She was in considerable doubt as to whether she ought to run before the British arrived, or wait

and chance being made a prisoner. She said she would prefer to escape, but what with standing on her feet all

day in the kitchen preparing meals for hungry burghers and foreign volunteers, she was too tired to get away.

War close at hand consists so largely of commonplaces and trivial details that I hope I may be pardoned for

recording the anxieties and cares of this lady from Brooklyn. Her point of view so admirably illustrates one

side of war. It is only when you are ten years away from it, or ten thousand miles away from it, that you

forget the dull places, and only the moments loom up which are terrible, picturesque, and momentous. We

have read, in "Vanity Fair," of the terror and the mad haste to escape of the people of Brussels on the eve of

That is the picture of war you remember and which appeals. As a rule, people like to read of the rumble of

cannon through the streets of Ventersburg, the silent, dusty columns of the reenforcements passing in the

moonlight, the galloping hoofs of the aides suddenly beating upon the night air and growing fainter and dying

away, the buglecalls from the camps along the river, the stamp of spurred boots as the general himself enters

the hotel and spreads the blue print maps upon the table, the clanking sabres of his staff, standing behind

him in the candlelight, whispering and tugging at their gauntlets while the great man plans his attack. You

must stop with the British army if you want buglecalls and clanking sabres and gauntlets. They are a part of

the panoply of war and of warriors. But we saw no warriors at Ventersburg that night, only a few cattle

breeders and farmers who were fighting for the land they had won from the lion and the bushman, and with

them a mixed company of gentleman adventurersgathered around a table discussing other days in other

lands. The picture of war which is most familiar is the one of the people of Brussels fleeing from the city with

the French guns booming in the distance, or as one sees it in "Shenandoah," where aides gallop on and off the

stage and the night signals flash from both sides of the valley. That is the obvious and dramatic side; the other

side of war is the night before the battle, at Jones's Hotel; the landlady in the diningroom with her elbows on

the table, fretfully deciding that after a day in front of the cookingstove she is too tired to escape an

invading army, declaring that the one place at which she would rather be at that moment was Green's

restaurant in Philadelphia, the heated argument that immediately follows between the foreign legion and the

Americans as to whether Rector's is not better than the Cafe de Paris, and the general agreement that Ritz

cannot hope to run two hotels in London without being robbed. That is how the men talked and acted on the

eve of a battle. We heard no galloping aides, no clanking spurs, only the click of the clipped billiard balls as

the American scouts (who were killed thirtysix hours later) knocked them about the torn billiardcloth, the

drip, drip of the kerosene from a blazing, sweating lamp, which struck the dirty tablecloth, with the regular

ticking of a hall clock, and the complaint of the piano from the hotel parlor, where the correspondent of a

Boston paper was picking out "Hello, My Baby," laboriously with one finger. War is not so terribly dramatic

or excitingat the time; and the real trials of warat the time, and not as one later remembers

themconsist largely in looting fodder for your ponies and in bribing the stationmaster to put on an open

We were wakened about two o'clock in the morning by a loud knocking on a door and the distracted voice of

the local justice of the peace calling upon the landlord to rouse himself and fly. The English, so the voice

informed the various guests, as door after door was thrown open upon the courtyard, were at Ventersburg

Station, only two hours away. The justice of the peace wanted to buy or to borrow a horse, and wanted it very

badly, but a sleepyeyed and sceptical audience told him unfeelingly that he was either drunk or dreaming,

and only the landlady, now apparently refreshed after her labors, was keenly, even hysterically, intent on

instant flight. She sat up in her bed with her hair in curl papers and a revolver beside her, and through her

open door shouted advice to her lodgers. But they were unsympathetic, and reassured her only by banging

their doors and retiring with profane grumbling, and in a few moments the silence was broken only by the

voice of the justice as he fled down the main street of Ventersburg offering his kingdom for a horse.

The next morning we rode out to the Sand River to see the Boer positions near the drift, and met President

Steyn in his Cape cart coming from them on his way to the bridge. Ever since the occupation of

Bloemfontein, the London papers had been speaking of him as "the Late President," as though he were dead.

He impressed me, on the contrary, as being very much alive and very much the President, although his

executive chamber was the dancinghall of a hotel and his rooftree the hood of a Cape cart. He stood in the

middle of the road, and talked hopefully of the morrow. He had been waiting, he said, to see the development

of the enemy's attack, but the British had not appeared, and, as he believed they would not advance that day,

he was going on to the bridge to talk to his burghers and to consult with General Botha. He was much more a

man of the world and more the professional politician than President Kruger. I use the words "professional

politician" in no unpleasant sense, but meaning rather that he was ready, tactful, and diplomatic. For instance,

he gave to whatever he said the air of a confidence reserved especially for the ear of the person to whom he

spoke. He showed none of the bitterness which President Kruger exhibits toward the British, but took the

tone toward the English Government of the most critical and mused tolerance. Had he heard it, it would have

"I see that the London Chronicle," he said, "asks if, since I have become a rebel, I do not lose my rights as a

Barrister of the Temple? Of course, we are no more rebels than the Spaniards were rebels against the United

States. By a great stretch of the truth, under the suzerainty clause, the burghers of the Transvaal might be

called rebels, but a Free Staternever! It is not the animosity of the English which I mind," he added,

His cheerfulness and hopefulness, even though one guessed they were assumed, commanded one's

admiration. He was being hunted out of one village after another, the miles of territory still free to him were

hourly shrinkingin a few days he would be a refugee in the Transvaal; but he stood in the open veldt with

all his possessions in the cart behind him, a president without a republic, a man without a home, but still full

The farmhouse of General Andrew Cronje stood just above the drift and was the only conspicuous mark for

the English guns on our side of the river, so in order to protect it the general had turned it over to the

ambulance corps to be used as a hospital. They had lashed a great Red Cross flag to the chimney and filled

the clean shelves of the generously built kitchen with bottles of antiseptics and bitter smelling drugs and

surgeons' cutlery. President Steyn gave me a letter to Dr. Rodgers Reid, who was in charge, and he offered us

our choice of the deserted bedrooms. It was a most welcome shelter, and in comparison to the cold veldt the

hospital was a haven of comfort. Hundreds of cooing doves, stumbling over the roof of the barn, helped to fill

the air with their peaceful murmur. It was a strange overture to a battle, but in time I learned to not listen for

any more martial prelude. The Boer does not make a business of war, and when he is not actually fighting he

pretends that he is camping out for pleasure. In his laager there are no warlike sounds, no sentries challenge,

no bugles call. He has no duties to perform, for his Kaffir boys care for his pony, gather his wood, and build

his fire. He has nothing to do but to wait for the next fight, and to make the time pass as best he can. In camp

the burghers are like a party of children. They play games with each other, and play tricks upon each other,

and engage in numerous wrestling bouts, a form of contest of which they seem particularly fond. They are

like children also in that they are direct and simple, and as courteous as the ideal child should be. Indeed, if I

were asked what struck me as the chief characteristics of the Boer I should say they were the two qualities

which the English have always disallowed him, his simplicity rather than his "cuteness," and his courtesy

The force that waited at the drift by Cronje's farm as it lay spread out on both sides of the river looked like a

gathering of Wisconsin lumbermen, of Adirondack guides and hunters halted at Paul Smith's, like a

The eye sought in vain for rows of tents, for the horses at the picket line, for the flags that marked the

headquarters, the commissariat, the field telegraph, the field postoffice, the A. S. C., the R. M. A. C., the

I remembered that great army of General Buller's as I saw it stretching out over the basin of the Tugela, like

the children of Israel in number, like Tammany Hall in organization and discipline, with not a tentpin

missing; with hospitals as complete as those established for a hundred years in the heart of London; with

search lights, heliographs, war balloons, Roentgen rays, pontoon bridges, telegraph wagons, and trenching

tools, farriers with anvils, major generals, mapmakers, "gallopers," intelligence departments, even biographs

and presscensors; every kind of thing and every kind of man that goes to make up a British army corps. I

knew that seven miles from us just such another completely equipped and disciplined column was advancing

And opposed to it was this merry company of Boer farmers lying on the grass, toasting pieces of freshly

killed ox on the end of a stick, their hobbled ponies foraging for themselves a halfmile away, a thousand

It was a picnic, a pastoral scene, not a scene of war. On the hills overlooking the drift were the guns, but

down along the banks the burghers were sitting in circles singing the evening hymns, many of them sung to

the tunes familiar in the service of the Episcopal Church, so that it sounded like a Sunday evening in the

country at home. At the drift other burghers were watering the oxen, bathing and washing in the cold river;

around the campfires others were smoking luxuriously, with their saddles for pillows. The evening breeze

brought the sweet smell of burning wood, a haze of smoke from many fires, the lazy hum of hundreds of

voices rising in the open air, the neighing of many horses, and the swift soothing rush of the river.

When morning came to Cronje's farm it brought with it no warning nor sign of battle. We began to believe

that the British army was an invention of the enemy's. So we cooked bacon and fed the doves, and smoked on

the veranda, moving our chairs around it with the sun, and argued as to whether we should stay where we

were or go on to the bridge. At noon it was evident there would be no fight at the drift that day, so we started

along the bank of the river, with the idea of reaching the bridge before nightfall. The trail lay on the English

side of the river, so that we were in constant concern lest our whitehooded Cape cart would be seen by some

of their scouts and we would be taken prisoners and forced to travel all the way back to Cape Town. We saw

many herds of deer, but no scouts or lancers, and, such being the effect of many kopjes, lost all ideas as to

where we were. We knew we were bearing steadily south toward Lord Roberts, who as we later learned, was

About two o'clock his guns opened on our left, so we at least knew that we were still on the wrong side of the

river and that we must be between the Boer and the English artillery. Except for that, our knowledge of our

geographical position was a blank, and we accordingly "outspanned" and cooked more bacon.

"Outspanning" is unharnessing the ponies and mules and turning them out graze, and takes three

minutes"inspanning" is trying to catch them again, and takes from three to five hours.

We started back over the trail over which we had come, and just at sunset saw a man appear from behind a

rock and disappear again. Whether he was Boer or Briton I could not tell, but while I was examining the rock

with my glasses two Boers came galloping forward and ordered me to "hands up." To sit with both arms in

the air is an extremely ignominious position, and especially annoying if the pony is restless, so I

compromised by waving my whip as high as I could reach with one hand, and still held in the horse with the

other. The third man from behind the rock rode up at the same time. They said they had watched us coming

from the English lines, and that we were prisoners. We assured them that for us nothing could be more

satisfactory, because we now knew where we were, and because they had probably saved us a week's trip to

Cape Town. They examined and approved of our credentials, and showed us the proper trail which we

managed to follow until they had disappeared, when the trail disappeared also, and we were again lost in

what seemed an interminable valley. But just before nightfall the fires of the commando showed in front of us

and we rode into the camp of General Christian De Wet. He told us we could not reach the bridge that night,

and showed us a farmhouse on a distant kopje where we could find a place to spread our blankets. I was

extremely glad to meet him, as he and General Botha are the most able and brave of the Boer generals. He

was big, manly, and of impressive size, and, although he speaks English, he dictated to his adjutant many

We found the people in the farmhouse on the distant kopje quite hysterical over the near presence of the

British, and the entire place in such an uproar that we slept out in the veldt. In the morning we were

awakened by the sound of the VickarMaxim or the "pompom" as the English call it, or "bombMaxim" as

the Boers call it. By any name it was a remarkable gun and the most demoralizing of any of the smaller

pieces which have been used in this campaign. One of its values is that its projectiles throw up sufficient dust

to enable the gunner to tell exactly where they strike, and within a few seconds he is able to alter the range

accordingly. In this way it is its own rangefinder. Its bark is almost as dangerous as its bite, for its reports

have a brisk, insolent sound like a postman's knock, or a cooper hammering rapidly on an empty keg, and

there is an unexplainable mocking sound to the reports, as though the gun were laughing at you. The English

Tommies used to call it very aptly the "hyena gun." I found it much less offensive from the rear than when I

From the top of a kopje we saw that the battle had at last begun and that the bridge was the objective point.

The English came up in great lines and blocks and from so far away and in such close order that at first in

spite of the khaki they looked as though they wore uniforms of blue. They advanced steadily, and two hours

later when we had ridden to a kopje still nearer the bridge, they were apparently in the same formation as

when we had first seen them, only now farms that had lain far in their rear were overrun by them and they

encompassed the whole basin. An army of twentyfive thousand men advancing in full view across a great

plain appeals to you as something entirely lacking in the human element. You do not think of it as a

collection of very tired, dusty, and perspiring men with aching legs and parched lips, but as an unnatural

phenomenon, or a gigantic monster which wipes out a railway station, a cornfield, and a village with a single

clutch of one of its tentacles. You would as soon attribute human qualities to a plague, a tidal wave, or a

slowly slipping landslide. One of the tentacles composed of six thousand horse had detached itself and

crossed the river below the bridge, where it was creeping up on Botha's right. We could see the burghers

galloping before it toward Ventersburg. At the bridge General Botha and President Steyn stood in the open

road and with uplifted arms waved the Boers back, calling upon them to stand. But the burghers only shook

their heads and with averted eyes grimly and silently rode by them on the other side. They knew they were

flanked, they knew the men in the moving mass in front of them were in the proportion of nine to one.

When you looked down upon the lines of the English army advancing for three miles across the plain, one

could hardly blame them. The burghers did not even raise their Mausers. One bullet, the size of a broken

slatepencil, falling into a block three miles across and a mile deep, seems so inadequate. It was like trying to

It is true they had held back as many at Colenso, but the defensive positions there were magnificent, and

since then six months had passed, during which time the same thirty thousand men who had been fighting

then were fighting still, while the enemy was always new, with fresh recruits and reenforcements arriving

As the English officers at Durban, who had so lately arrived from home that they wore swords, used to say

with the proud consciousness of two hundred thousand men back of them: "It won't last much longer now.

The Boers have had their belly full of fighting. They're fed up on it; that's what it is; they're fed up."

They forgot that the Boers, who for three months had held Buller back at the Tugela, were the same Boers

who were rushed across the Free State to rescue Cronje from Roberts, and who were then sent to meet the

relief column at Fourteen Streams, and were then ordered back again to harass Roberts at Sannahspost, and

who, at last, worn out, stale, heartsick, and hopeless at the unequal odds and endless fighting, fell back at

For three months thirty thousand men had been attempting the impossible task of endeavoring to meet an

I have seen a retreat in Greece when the men, before they left the trenches, stood up in them and raged and

cursed at the advancing Turk, cursed at their government, at their king, at each other, and retreated with

But the retreat of the burghers of the Free State was not like that. They rose one by one and saddled their

ponies, with the look in their faces of men who had been attending the funeral of a friend and who were

leaving just before the coffin was swallowed in the grave. Some of them, for a long time after the greater

number of the commando had ridden away, sat upon the rocks staring down into the sunny valley below

them, talking together gravely, rising to take a last look at the territory which was their own. The shells of the

victorious British sang triumphantly over the heads of their own artillery, bursting impotently in white smoke

But they did not heed them. They did not even send a revengeful bullet into the approaching masses. The

sweetness of revenge could not pay for what they had lost. They looked down upon the farm houses of men

they knew; upon their own farmhouses rising in smoke; they saw the Englishmen like a pest of locusts

settling down around gardens and farmhouses still nearer, and swallowing them up.

Their companions, already far on the way to safety, waved to them from the veldt to follow; an excited doctor

carrying a wounded man warned us that the English were just below, storming the hill. "Our artillery is

aiming at five hundred yards," he shouted, but still the remaining burghers stood immovable, leaning on their

rifles, silent, homeless, looking down without rage or show of feeling at the great waves of khaki sweeping

We knew it was a battle because the Japanese officers told us it was. In other wars I had seen other battles,

many sorts of battles, but I had never seen a battle like that one. Most battles are noisy, hurried, and violent,

giving rise to an unnatural thirst and to the delusion that, by some unhappy coincidence, every man on the

other side is shooting only at you. This delusion is not peculiar to myself. Many men have told me that in the

confusion of battle they always get this exaggerated idea of their own importance. Down in Cuba I heard a

colonel inform a group of brother officers that a Spanish fieldpiece had marked him for its own, and for an

hour had been pumping shrapnel at him and at no one else. The interesting part of the story was that he

But the battle of Anshantien was in no way disquieting. It was a noiseless, odorless, rubbertired battle. So

far as we were concerned it consisted of rings of shrapnel smoke floating over a mountain pass many miles

distant. So many miles distant that when, with a glass, you could see a speck of fire twinkle in the sun like a

heliograph, you could not tell whether it was the flash from the gun or the flame from the shell. Neither could

you tell whether the cigarette rings issued from the lips of the Japanese guns or from those of the Russians.

The only thing about that battle of which you were certain was that it was a perfectly safe battle to watch. It

was the first one I ever witnessed that did not require you to calmly smoke a pipe in order to conceal the fact

that you were scared. But soothing as it was, the battle lacked what is called the human interest. There may

have been men behind the guns, but as they were also behind Camel Hill and Saddle Mountain, eight miles

away, our eyes, like those of Mr. Samuel Weller, "being only eyes," were not able to discover them.

Our teachers, the three Japanese officers who were detailed to tell us about things we were not allowed to see,

gazed at the scene of carnage with wellsimulated horror. Their expressions of countenance showed that

should any one move the battle eight miles nearer, they were prepared to sell their lives dearly. When they

found that none of us were looking at them or their battle, they were hurt. The reason no one was looking at

them was because most of us had gone to sleep. The rest, with a bitter experience of Japanese promises, had

doubted there would be a battle, and had prepared themselves with newspapers. And so, while eight miles

away the preliminary battle to LiaoYang was making history, we were lying on the grass reading two

"You complain," they said, "because you are not allowed to see anything, and now, when we show you a

Lewis, of the Herald, eagerly seized his glasses and followed the track of the Siberian railway as it

"I beg your pardon, but I didn't know it was a battle," he apologized politely. "I thought it was a locomotive at

In order to see this battle we had travelled half around the world, had then waited four wasted months at

Tokio, then had taken a sea voyage of ten days, then for twelve days had ridden through mud and dust in

pursuit of the army, then for twelve more days, while battles raged ten miles away, had been kept prisoners in

a compound where five out of the eighteen correspondents were sick with dysentery or fever, and finally as a

reward we were released from captivity and taken to see smoke rings eight miles away! That night a

roundrobin, which was signed by all, was sent to General Oku, pointing out to him that unless we were

allowed nearer to his army than eight miles, our usefulness to the people who paid us our salaries was at an

While waiting for an answer to this we were led out to see another battle. Either that we might not miss one

minute of it, or that we should be too sleepy to see anything of it, we were started in black darkness, at three

o'clock in the morning, the hour, as we are told, when one's vitality is at its lowest, and one which should be

reserved for the exclusive use of burglars and robbers of hen roosts. Concerning that hour I learned this, that

whatever its effects may be upon human beings, it finds a horse at his most strenuous moment. At that hour

by the light of three paper lanterns we tried to saddle eighteen horses, donkeys, and ponies, and the sole

object of each was to kick the light out of the lantern nearest him. We finally rode off through a darkness that

was lightened only by a gray, dripping fog, and in a silence broken only by the patter of rain upon the corn

that towered high above our heads and for many miles hemmed us in. After an hour, Sataki, the teacher who

acted as our guide, lost the trail and Captain Lionel James, of the Times, who wrote "On the Heels of De

Wet," found it for him. Sataki, so our two other keepers told us, is an authority on international law, and he

may be all of that and know all there is to know of threemile limits and paper blockades, but when it came

to picking up a trail, even in the bright sunlight when it lay weltering beneath his horse's nostrils, we always

found that any correspondent with an experience of a few campaigns was of more general use. The trail

ended at a muddy hill, a bare sugarloaf of a hill, as high as the main tent of a circus and as abruptly sloping

away. It was swept by a damp, chilling wind; a mean, peevish rain washed its sides, and they were so steep

that if we sat upon them we tobogganed slowly downward, ploughing up the mud with our boot heels.

Hungry, sleepy, in utter darkness, we clung to this slippery mound in its ocean of whispering millet like

sailors wrecked in midsea upon a rock, and waited for the day. After two hours a gray mist came

grudgingly, trees and rocks grew out of it, trenches appeared at our feet, and what had before looked like a

Then, like shadows, the foreign attaches, whom we fondly hoped might turn out to be Russian Cossacks

coming to take us prisoners and carry us off to breakfast, rode up in silence and were halted at the base of the

hill. It seemed now, the audience being assembled, the orchestra might begin. But no hotthroated cannon

broke the chilling, dripping, silence, no upheaval of the air spoke of Canet guns, no whirling shrapnel

screamed and burst. Instead, the fog rolled back showing us miles of waving corn, the wet rails of the

Siberian Railroad glistening in the rain, and, masking the horizon, the same mountains from which the day

before the smoke rings had ascended. They now were dark, brooding, their tops hooded in clouds.

Somewhere in front of us hidden in the Kiao liang, hidden in the tiny villages, crouching on the banks of

streams, concealed in trenches that were themselves concealed, Oku's army, the army to which we were

supposed to belong, was buried from our sight. And in the mountains on our right lay the Fourth Army, and

twenty miles still farther to the right, Kuroki was closing in upon LiaoYang. All of this we guessed, what

we were told was very different, what we saw was nothing. In all, four hundred thousand men were not

farther from us than four to thirty milesand we saw nothing. We watched as the commissariat wagons

carrying food to these men passed us by, the hospital stores passed us by, the transport carts passed us by, the

coolies with reserve mounts, the last wounded soldier, straggler, and campfollower passed us by. Like a big

tidal wave Oku's army had swept forward leaving its unwelcome guests, the attaches and correspondents,

forty lonely foreigners among seventy thousand Japanese, stranded upon a hill miles in the rear. Perhaps, as

That night Major Okabe, our head teacher, gave us the official interpretation of what had occurred. The

Russians, he said, had retreated from LiaoYang and were in open flight. Unless General Kuroki, who, he

said, was fifty miles north of us, could cut them off they would reach Mukden in ten days, and until then

there would be no more fighting. The Japanese troops, he said, were in LiaoYang, it had been abandoned

The next morning Major Okabe delivered the answer of General Oku to our roundrobin. He informed us

that we had been as near to the fighting as we ever would be allowed to go. The nearest we had been to any

fighting was four miles. Our experience had taught us that when the Japanese promised us we would be

allowed to do something we wanted to do, they did not keep their promise; but that when they said we would

not be allowed to do something we wanted to do, they spoke the truth. Consequently, when General Oku

declared the correspondents would be held four miles in the rear, we believed he would keep his word. And,

as we now know, he did, the only men who saw the fighting that later ensued being those who disobeyed his

orders and escaped from their keepers. Those who had been ordered by their papers to strictly obey the

regulations of the Japanese, and the military attaches, were kept by Oku nearly six miles in the rear.

On the receipt of Oku's answer to the correspondents, Mr. John Fox, Jr., of Scribner's Magazine, Mr. Milton

Prior, of the London Illustrated News, Mr. George Lynch, of the London Morning Chronicle, and myself left

the army. We were very sorry to go. Apart from the fact that we had not been allowed to see anything of the

military operations, we were enjoying ourselves immensely. Personally, I never went on a campaign in a

more delightful country nor with better companions than the men acting as correspondents with the Second

Army. For the sake of such good company, and to see more of Manchuria, I personally wanted to keep on.

But I was not being paid to go camping with a set of good fellows. Already the Japanese had wasted six

months of my time and six months of Mr. Collier's money, Mr. Fox had been bottled up for a period of equal

length, while Mr. Prior and Mr. Lynch had been prisoners in Tokio for even four months longer. And now

that Okabe assured us that LiaoYang was already taken, and Oku told us if there were any fighting we

Other correspondents would have quit then, as most of them did ten days later, but that their work and ours in

a slight degree differed. As we were not working for daily papers, we used the cable but seldom, while they

used it every day. Each evening Okabe brought them the official account of battles and of the movements of

the troops, which news of events which they had not witnessed they sent to their separate papers. But for our

purposes it was necessary we should see things for ourselves. For, contrary to the popular accusation, no

matter how flattering it may be, we could not describe events at which we were not present.

But what mainly moved us to decide, was the statements of Okabe, the officer especially detailed by the War

Office to aid and instruct us, to act as our guide, philosopher, and friend, our only official source of

information, who told us that LiaoYang was occupied by the Japanese and that the Russians were in retreat.

He even begged me personally to come with him into LiaoYang on the 29th and see how it was progressing

Okabe's news meant that the great battle Kuropatkin had promised at LiaoYang, and which we had come to

Why Okabe lied I do not know. Whether Oku had lied to him, or whether it was BaronGeneral Kodama or

MajorGeneral Fukushima who had instructed him to so grossly misinform us, it is impossible to say. While

in Tokio no one ever more frequently, nor more unblushingly, made statements that they knew were untrue

than did Kodama and Fukushima, but none of their deceptions had ever harmed us so greatly as did the lie

they put into the mouth of Okabe. Not only had the Japanese NOT occupied LiaoYang on the evening of the

27th of August, but later, as everybody knows, they had TO FIGHT SIX DAYS to get into it. And Kuroki, so

far from being fifty miles north toward Mukden as Okabe said he was, was twenty miles to the east on our

right preparing for the closing in movement which was just about to begin. Three days after we had left the

So our half year of time and money, of dreary waiting, of daily humiliations at the hands of officers with

minds diseased by suspicion, all of which would have been made up to us by the sight of this one great

spectacle, was to the end absolutely lost to us. Perhaps we made a mistake in judgment. As the cards fell, we

certainly did. But after the event it is easy to be wise. For the last fifteen years, had I known as much the

night before the Grand Prix was run as I did the next afternoon, I would be passing rich.

The only proposition before us was this: There was small chance of any immediate fighting. If there were

fighting we could not see it. Confronted with the same conditions again, I would decide in exactly the same

manner. Our misfortune lay in the fact that our experience with other armies had led us to believe that

officers and gentlemen speak the truth, that men with titles of nobility, and with the higher titles of general

The parting from the other correspondents was a brutal attack upon the feelings which, had we known they

were to follow us two weeks later to Tokio, would have been spared us. It is worth recording why, after

waiting many months to get to the front, they in their turn so soon left it. After each of the big battles before

LiaoYang they handed the despatches they had written for their papers to Major Okabe. Each day he told

them these despatches had been censored and forwarded. After three days he brought back all the despatches

and calmly informed the correspondents that not one of their cables had been sent. It was the final affront of

Japanese duplicity. In recording the greatest battle of modern times three days had been lost, and by a lie. The

object of their coming to the Far East had been frustrated. It was fatuous to longer expect from Kodama and

his pupils fair play or honest treatment, and in the interest of their employers and to save their own

selfrespect, the representatives of all the most important papers in the world, the Times, of London, the New

York Herald, the Paris Figaro, the London Daily Telegraph, Daily Mail, and Morning Post, quit the Japanese

Meanwhile, unconscious of what we had missed, the four of us were congratulating ourselves upon our

escape, and had started for New Chwang. Our first halt was at HaiCheng, in the same compound in which

for many days with the others we had been imprisoned. But our halt was a brief one. We found the compound

glaring in the sun, empty, silent, filled only with memories of the men who, with their laughter, their stories,

But now all were gone, the old familiar faces and the familiar voices, and we threw our things back on the

carts and hurried away. The trails between HaiCheng and the sea made the worst going we had encountered

in Manchuria. You soon are convinced that the time has not been long since this tract of land lay entirely

under the waters of the Gulf of Liaotung. You soon scent the salt air, and as you flounder in the alluvial

deposits of ages, you expect to find the saltwater at the very roots of the millet. Water lies in every furrow

of the miles of cornfields, water flows in streams in the roads, water spreads in lakes over the compounds, it

oozes from beneath the very walls of the godowns. You would not be surprised at any moment to see the

tide returning to envelop you. In this liquid mud a cart can make a trail by the simple process of continuing

forward. The havoc is created in the millet and the ditches its ironstudded wheels dig in the mud leave to the

eyes of the next comer as perfectly good a trail as the one that has been in use for many centuries.

Consequently the opportunities for choosing the wrong trail are excellent, and we embraced every

opportunity. But friendly Chinamen, and certainly they are a friendly, human people, again and again

cheerfully went far out of their way to guide us back to ours, and so, after two days, we found ourselves five

Here we agreed to separate. We had heard a marvellous tale that at NewChwang there was ice, champagne,

and a hotel with enamelled bath tubs. We had unceasingly discussed the probability of this being true, and

what we would do with these luxuries if we got them, and when we came so near to where they were

supposed to be, it was agreed that one of us would ride on ahead and command them, while the others

followed with the carts. The lucky number fell to John Fox, and he left us at a gallop. He was to engage

rooms for the four, and to arrange for the care of seven Japanese interpreters and servants, nine Chinese

coolies, and nineteen horses and mules. We expected that by eight o'clock we would be eating the best dinner

John Fox could order. We were mistaken. Not that John Fox had not ordered the dinner, but no one ate it but

John Fox. The very minute he left us Priory's cart turned turtle in the mud, and the largest of his four mules

lay down in it and knocked off work. The mule was hot and very tired, and the mud was soft, cool, and wet,

so he burrowed under its protecting surface until all we could see of him was his ears. The coolies shrieked at

him, Prior issued ultimatums at him, the Japanese servants stood on dry land fifteen feet away and talked

about him, but he only snuggled deeper into his mud bath. When there is no more of a mule to hit than his

ears, he has you at a great disadvantage, and when the coolies waded in and tugged at his head, we found that

the harder they tugged, the deeper they sank. When they were so far out of sight that we were in danger of

losing them too, we ordered them to give up the struggle and unload the cart. Before we got it out of

drydock, reloaded, and again in line with the other carts it was nine o clock, and dark.

In the meantime, Lynch, his sense of duty weakened by visions of enamelled bathtubs filled with champagne

and floating lumps of ice, had secretly abandoned us, stealing away in the night and leaving us to follow.

This, not ten minutes after we had started, Mr. Prior decided that he would not do, so he camped out with the

carts in a village, while, dinnerless, supperless, and thirsty, I rode on alone. I reached NewChwang at

midnight, and after being refused admittance by the Japanese soldiers, was finally rescued by the Number

One man from the Manchuria Hotel, who had been sent out by Fox with two sikhs and a lantern to find me.

For some minutes I dared not ask him the fateful questions. It was better still to hope than to put one's

There was a long, grateful pause, and then in a voice that trembled, I again asked, "Champagne, have got?"

When I arrived John Fox had gone to bed, and as it was six weeks since any of us had seen a real bed, I did

not wake him. Hence, he did not know I was in the hotel, and throughout the troubles that followed I slept

Meanwhile, Lynch, as a punishment for running away from us, lost his own way, and, after stumbling into an

old sow and her litter of pigs, which on a dark night is enough to startle any one, stumbled into a Japanese

outpost, was hailed as a Russian spy, and made prisoner. This had one advantage, as he now was able to find

NewChwang, to which place he was marched, closely guarded, arriving there at half past two in the

morning. Since he ran away from us he had been wandering about on foot for ten hours. He sent a note to Mr.

Little, the British Consul, and to Bush Brothers, the kings of NewChwang, and, still tormented by visions of

ice and champagne, demanded that his captors take him to the Manchuria Hotel. There he swore they would

find a pass from Fukushima allowing him to enter NewChwang, three friends who could identify him, four

carts, seven servants, nine coolies, and nineteen animals. The commandant took him to the Manchuria Hotel,

where instead of this wealth of corroborative detail they found John Fox in bed. As Prior, the only one of us

not in New Chwang, had the pass from Fukushima, permitting us to enter it, there was no one to prove what

either Lynch or Fox said, and the officer flew into a passion and told Fox he would send both of them out of

town on the first train. Mr. Fox was annoyed at being pulled from his bed at three in the morning to be told he

was a Russian spy, so he said that there was not a train fast enough to get him out of New Chwang as

quickly as he wanted to go, or, for that matter, out of Japan and away from the Japanese people. At this the

officer, being a Yale graduate, and speaking very pure English, told Mr. Fox to "shut up," and Mr. Fox being

a Harvard graduate, with an equally perfect command of English, pure and undefiled, shook his fist in the

face of the Japanese officer and told him to "shut up yourself." Lynch, seeing the witness he had summoned

for the defence about to plunge into conflict with his captor, leaped unhappily from foot to foot, and was

heard diplomatically suggesting that all hands should adjourn for ice and champagne.

"If I were a spy," demanded Fox, "do you suppose I would have ridden into your town on a white horse and

registered at your headquarters and then ordered four rooms at the principal hotel and accommodations for

seven servants, nine coolies, and nineteen animals? Is that the way a Russian spy works? Does he go around

The officer, unable to answer in kind this excellent reasoning, took a mean advantage of his position by

placing both John and Lynch under arrest, and at the head of each bed a Japanese policeman to guard their

slumbers. The next morning Prior arrived with the pass, and from the decks of the first outbound English

steamer Fox hurled through the captain's brass speakingtrumpet our farewells to the Japanese, as

represented by the gunboats in the harbor. Their officers, probably thinking his remarks referred to floating

mines, ran eagerly to the side. But our ship's captain tumbled from the bridge, rescued his trumpet, and

begged Fox, until we were under the guns of a British manofwar, to issue no more farewell addresses. The

next evening we passed into the Gulf of Pechili, and saw above Port Arthur the great guns flashing in the

I went at once to the cable station to cable Collier's I was returning, and asked the Chinaman in charge if my

name was on his list of those correspondents who could send copy collect. He said it was; and as I started to

For a moment I did not lift my eyes. I felt a chill creeping down my spine. I knew what sort of a blow was

"Because you are the first," he said. "You are the only correspondent to arrive who has seen the battle of

The chill turned to a sort of nausea. I knew then what disaster had fallen, but I cheated myself by pretending

the man was misinformed. "There was no battle," I protested. "The Japanese told me themselves they had

entered LiaoYang without firing a shot." The cable operator was a gentleman. He saw my distress, saw what

it meant and delivered the blow with the distaste of a physician who must tell a patient he cannot recover.

Gently, reluctantly, with real sympathy he said, "They have been fighting for six days."

I went over to a bench, and sat down; and when Lynch and Fox came in and took one look at me, they

guessed what had happened. When the Chinaman told them of what we had been cheated, they, in their turn,

came to the bench, and collapsed. No one said anything. No one even swore. Six months we had waited only

to miss by three days the greatest battle since Gettysburg and Sedan. And by a lie.

For six months we had tasted all the indignities of the suspected spy, we had been prisoners of war, we had

been ticketofleave men, and it is not difficult to imagine our glad surprise that same day when we saw in

the harbor the white hull of the cruiser Cincinnati with our flag lifting at her stern. We did not know a soul on

board, but that did not halt us. As refugees, as fleeing political prisoners, as American slaves escaping from

their Japanese jailers, we climbed over the side and demanded protection and dinner. We got both. Perhaps it

was not good to rest on that bit of driftwood, that atom of our country that had floated far from the mainland

and now formed an island of American territory in the harbor of Chefoo. Perhaps we were not content to sit at

the mahogany table in the glistening white and brass bound wardroom surrounded by those eager, sunburned

faces, to hear sea slang and home slang in the accents of Maine, Virginia, and New York City. We forgot our

darkskinned keepers with the slanting, suspicious, unfriendly eyes, with tongues that spoke the one thing

and meant the other. All the memories of those six months of deceit, of broken pledges, of unnecessary

humiliations, of petty unpoliteness from a halfeducated, halfbred, conceited, and arrogant people fell from

us like a heavy knapsack. We were again at home. Again with our own people. Out of the happy confusion of

that great occasion I recall two toasts. One was offered by John Fox. "Japan for the Japanese, and the

Japanese for Japan." Even the Japanese wardroom boy did not catch its significance. The other was a

paraphrase of a couplet in reference to our brown brothers of the Philippines first spoken in Manila. "To the

Japanese: 'They may be brothers to Commodore Perry, but they ain't no brothers of mine.'"

It was a joyous night. Lieutenant Gilmore, who had been an historic prisoner in the Philippines, so far

sympathized with our escape from the Yellow Peril as to intercede with the captain to extend the rules of the

ship. And those rules that were incapable of extending broke. Indeed, I believe we broke everything but the

eightinch gun. And finally we were conducted to our steamer in a launch crowded with slimwaisted,

broadchested youths in white mess jackets, clasping each other's shoulders and singing, "Way down in my

heart, I have a feeling for you, a sort of feeling for you"; while the officer of the deck turned his back, and

It was an American cruiser that rescued this war correspondent from the bondage of Japan. It will require all

I am going to try to describe some kits and outfits I have seen used in different parts of the world by travellers

and explorers, and in different campaigns by army officers and war correspondents. Among the articles, the

reader may learn of some new thing which, when next he goes hunting, fishing, or exploring, he can adapt to

his own uses. That is my hope, but I am sceptical. I have seldom met the man who would allow any one else

to select his kit, or who would admit that any other kit was better than the one he himself had packed. It is a

very delicate question. The same article that one declares is the most essential to his comfort, is the very first

thing that another will throw into the trail. A man's outfit is a matter which seems to touch his private honor. I

have heard veterans sitting around a campfire proclaim the superiority of their kits with a jealousy, loyalty,

and enthusiasm they would not exhibit for the flesh of their flesh and the bone of their bone. On a campaign,

you may attack a man's courage, the flag he serves, the newspaper for which he works, his intelligence, or his

camp manners, and he will ignore you; but if you criticise his patent waterbottle he will fall upon you with

both fists. So, in recommending any article for an outfit, one needs to be careful. An outfit lends itself to

dispute, because the selection of its component parts is not an exact science. It should be, but it is not. A

doctor on his daily rounds can carry in a compact little satchel almost everything he is liable to need; a

carpenter can stow away in one box all the tools of his trade. But an outfit is not selected on any recognized

principles. It seems to be a question entirely of temperament. As the man said when his friends asked him

how he made his famous cocktail, "It depends on my mood." The truth is that each man in selecting his outfit

generally follows the lines of least resistance. With one, the pleasure he derives from his morning bath

outweighs the fact that for the rest of the day he must carry a rubber bathtub. Another man is hearty, tough,

and inured to an outofdoor life. He can sleep on a pile of coal or standing on his head, and he naturally

scorns to carry a bed. But another man, should he sleep all night on the ground, the next day would be of no

use to himself, his regiment, or his newspaper. So he carries a folding cot and the more fortunate one of

tougher fibre laughs at him. Another man says that the only way to campaign is to travel "light," and sets

forth with raincoat and fieldglass. He honestly thinks that he travels light because his intelligence tells him

it is the better way; but, as a matter of fact, he does so because he is lazy. Throughout the entire campaign he

borrows from his friends, and with that camaraderie and unselfishness that never comes to the surface so

strongly as when men are thrown together in camp, they lend him whatever he needs. When the war is over,

he is the man who goes about saying: "Some of those fellows carried enough stuff to fill a moving van. Now,

As a matter of fact, I have a sneaking admiration for the man who dares to borrow. His really is the part of

wisdom. But at times he may lose himself in places where he can neither a borrower nor a lender be, and

there are men so tenderly constituted that they cannot keep another man hungry while they use his

coffeepot. So it is well to take a few things with youif only to lend them to the men who travel "light."

On hunting and campaigning trips the climate, the means of transport, and the chance along the road of

obtaining food and fodder vary so greatly that it is not possible to map out an outfit which would serve

equally well for each of them. What on one journey was your most precious possession on the next is a

useless nuisance. On two trips I have packed a tent weighing, with the stakes, fifty pounds, which, as we slept

in huts, I never once had occasion to open; while on other trips in countries that promised to be more or less

settled, I had to always live under canvas, and sometimes broke camp twice a day.

In one war, in which I worked for an English paper, we travelled like majorgenerals. When that war started

few thought it would last over six weeks, and many of the officers regarded it in the light of a picnic. In

consequence, they mobilized as they never would have done had they foreseen what was to come, and the

mess contractor grew rich furnishing, not only champagne, which in campaigns in fever countries has saved

the life of many a good man, but cases of even port and burgundy, which never greatly helped any one. Later

these mess supplies were turned over to the fieldhospitals, but at the start every one travelled with more than

he needed and more than the regulations allowed, and each correspondent was advised that if he represented a

firstclass paper and wished to "save his face" he had better travel in state. Those who did not, found the staff

and censor less easy of access, and the means of obtaining information more difficult. But it was a nuisance.

If, when a man halted at your tent, you could not stand him whiskey and sparklet soda, Egyptian cigarettes,

compressed soup, canned meats, and marmalade, your paper was suspected of trying to do it "on the cheap,"

and not only of being mean, but, as this was a popular war, unpatriotic. When the army stripped down to

work all this was discontinued, but at the start I believe there were carried with that column as many tins of

tanleather dressing as there were rifles. On that march my own outfit was as unwieldy as a gypsy's caravan.

It consisted of an enormous cart, two oxen, three Basuto ponies, one Australian horse, three servants, and

four hundred pounds of supplies and baggage. When it moved across the plain it looked as large as a Fall

River boat. Later, when I joined the opposing army, and was not expected to maintain the dignity of a great

London daily, I carried all my belongings strapped to my back, or to the back of my one pony, and I was

quite as comfortable, clean, and content as I had been with the private car and the circus tent.

Throughout the Greek war, as there were no horses to be had for love or money, we walked, and I learned

then that when one has to carry his own kit the number of things he can do without is extraordinary. While I

marched with the army, offering my kingdom for a horse, I carried my outfit in saddlebags thrown over my

shoulder. And I think it must have been a good outfit, for I never bought anything to add to it or threw

Further on, should any reader care to know how for several months one may keep going with an outfit he can

pack in two saddlebags, I will give a list of the articles which in three campaigns I carried in mine.

Personally, I am for travelling "light," but at the very start one is confronted with the fact that what one man

calls light to another savors of luxury. I call fifty pounds light; in Japan we each were allowed the officer's

allowance of sixtysix pounds. Lord Wolseley, in his "Pocketbook," cuts down the officer's kit to forty

pounds, while "Nessmut," of the Forest and Stream, claims that for a hunting trip, all one wants does not

weigh over twentysix pounds. It is very largely a question of compromise. You cannot eat your cake and

have it. You cannot, under a tropical sun, throw away your blanket and when the night dew falls wrap it

around you. And if, after a day of hard climbing or riding, you want to drop into a folding chair, to make

By travelling light I do not mean any lighter than the necessity demands. If there is transport at hand, a man is

foolish not to avail himself of it. He is always foolish if he does not make things as easy for himself as

possible. The tenderfoot will not agree with this. With him there is no idea so fixed, and no idea so absurd, as

that to be comfortable is to be effeminate. He believes that "roughing it" is synonymous with hardship, and in

season and out of season he plays the Spartan. Any man who suffers discomforts he can avoid because he

fears his comrades will think he cannot suffer hardships is an idiot. You often hear it said of a man that "he

can rough it with the best of them." Any one can do that. The man I want for a "bunkie" is the one who can be

comfortable while the best of them are roughing it. The old soldier knows that it is his duty to keep himself

fit, so that he can perform his work, whether his work is scouting for forage or scouting for men, but you will

often hear the volunteer captain say: "Now, boys, don't forget we're roughing it; and don't expect to be

comfortable." As a rule, the only reason his men are uncomfortable is because he does not know how to make

them otherwise; or because he thinks, on a campaign, to endure unnecessary hardship is the mark of a soldier.

In the Cuban campaign the day the American forces landed at Siboney a majorgeneral of volunteers took up

his headquarters in the house from which the Spanish commandant had just fled, and on the veranda of

which Caspar Whitney and myself had found two hammocks and made ourselves at home. The Spaniard who

had been left to guard the house courteously offered the majorgeneral his choice of three bedrooms. They

all were on the first floor and opened upon the veranda, and to the general's staff a tent could have been no

easier of access. Obviously, it was the duty of the general to keep himself in good physical condition, to

obtain as much sleep as possible, and to rest his great brain and his limbs cramped with ten days on

shipboard. But in a tone of stern reproof he said, "No; I am campaigning now, and I have given up all

luxuries." And with that he stretched a poncho on the hard boards of the veranda, where, while just a few feet

from him the three beds and white mosquito nets gleamed invitingly, he tossed and turned. Besides being a

silly spectacle, the sight of an old gentleman lying wide awake on his shoulderblades was disturbing, and as

the hours dragged on we repeatedly offered him our hammocks. But he fretfully persisted in his

determination to be uncomfortable. And he was. The feelings of his unhappy staff, several of whom were

officers of the regular army, who had to follow the example of their chief, were toward morning hardly loyal.

Later, at the very moment the army moved up to the battle of San Juan this same majorgeneral was relieved

of his command on account of illness. Had he sensibly taken care of himself, when the moment came when

he was needed, he would have been able to better serve his brigade and his country. In contrast to this pose is

the conduct of the veteran hunter, or old soldier. When he gets into camp his first thought, after he has cared

for his horse, is for his own comfort. He does not wolf down a cold supper and then spread his blanket

wherever he happens to be standing. He knows that, especially at night, it is unfair to ask his stomach to

digest cold rations. He knows that the warmth of his body is needed to help him to sleep soundly, not to fight

chunks of canned meat. So, no matter how sleepy he may be, he takes the time to build a fire and boil a cup

of tea or coffee. Its warmth aids digestion and saves his stomach from working overtime. Nor will he act on

the theory that he is "so tired he can sleep anywhere." For a few hours the man who does that may sleep the

sleep of exhaustion. But before day breaks he will feel under him the roots and stones, and when he awakes

he is stiff, sore and unrefreshed. Ten minutes spent in digging holes for hips and shoulderblades, in

collecting grass and branches to spread beneath his blanket, and leaves to stuff in his boots for a pillow, will

give him a whole night of comfort and start him well and fit on the next day's tramp. If you have watched an

old sergeant, one of the Indian fighters, of which there are now too few left in the army, when he goes into

camp, you will see him build a bunk and possibly a shelter of boughs just as though for the rest of his life he

intended to dwell in that particular spot. Down in the Garcia campaign along the Rio Grande I said to one of

them: "Why do you go to all that trouble? We break camp at daybreak." He said: "Do we? Well, maybe you

know that, and maybe the captain knows that, but I don't know it. And so long as I don't know it, I am going

to be just as snug as though I was halted here for a month." In camping, that was one of my first and best

lessonsto make your surroundings healthy and comfortable. The temptation always is to say, "Oh, it is for

only one night, and I am too tired." The next day you say the same thing, "We'll move tomorrow. What's the

use?" But the fishing or shooting around the camp proves good, or it comes on to storm, and for maybe a

week you do not move, and for a week you suffer discomforts. An hour of work put in at the beginning would

When there is transport of even one packhorse, one of the best helps toward making camp quickly is a

combination of panniers and bed used for many years by E. F. Knight, the Times war correspondent, who lost

an arm at Gras Pan. It consists of two leather trunks, which by day carry your belongings slung on either side

of the packanimal, and by night act as uprights for your bed. The bed is made of canvas stretched on two

poles which rest on the two trunks. For travelling in upper India this arrangement is used almost universally.

Mr. Knight obtained his during the Chitral campaign, and since then has used it in every war. He had it with

A more compact form of valise and bed combined is the "carryall," or any of the many makes of

sleepingbags, which during the day carry the kit and at night when spread upon the ground serve for a bed.

The one once most used by Englishmen was Lord Wolseley's "valise and sleepingbag." It was complicated

by a number of strings, and required as much lacing as a dozen pairs of boots. It has been greatly improved

by a new sleepingbag with straps, and flaps that tuck in at the ends. But the obvious disadvantage of all

sleeping bags is that in rain and mud you are virtually lying on the hard ground, at the mercy of tarantula

The carryall is, nevertheless, to my mind, the most nearly perfect way in which to pack a kit. I have tried the

trunk, valise, and sleepingbag, and vastly prefer it to them all. My carryall differs only from the

sleepingbag in that, instead of lining it so that it may be used as a bed, I carry in its pocket a folding cot. By

omitting the extra lining for the bed, I save almost the weight of the cot. The folding cot I pack is the Gold

Medal Bed, made in this country, but which you can purchase almost anywhere. I once carried one from

Chicago to Cape Town to find on arriving I could buy the bed there at exactly the same price I had paid for it

in America. I also found them in Tokio, where imitations of them were being made by the ingenious and

disingenuous Japanese. They are light in weight, strong, and comfortable, and are undoubtedly the best

campbed made. When at your elevation of six inches above the ground you look down from one of them

upon a comrade in a sleepingbag with rivulets of rain and a tide of muddy water rising above him, your

My carryall is of canvas with a back of waterproof. It is made up of three strips six and a half feet long. The

two outer strips are each two feet three inches wide, the middle strip four feet. At one end of the middle strip

is a deep pocket of heavy canvas with a flap that can be fastened by two straps. When the kit has been packed

in this pocket, the two side strips are folded over it and the middle strip and the whole is rolled up and

buckled by two heavy straps on the waterproof side. It is impossible for any article to fall out or for the rain to

soak in. I have a smaller carryall made on the same plan, but on a tiny scale, in which to carry small articles

and a change of clothing. It goes into the pocket after the bed, chair, and the heavier articles are packed away.

When the bag is rolled up they are on the outside of and form a protection to the articles of lighter weight.

The only objection to the carryall is that it is an awkward bundle to pack. It is difficult to balance it on the

back of an animal, but when you are taking a tent with you or carrying your provisions, it can be slung on one

I use the carryall when I am travelling "heavy." By that I mean when it is possible to obtain packanimal or

cart. When travelling light and bivouacking by night without a packhorse, bed, or tent, I use the

saddlebags, already described. These can be slung over the back of the horse you ride, or if you walk,

carried over your shoulder. I carried them in this latter way in Greece, in the Transvaal, and Cuba during the

The list of articles I find most useful when travelling where it is possible to obtain transport, or, as we may

A tent, seven by ten feet, with fly, jointed poles, tentpins, a heavy mallet. I recommend a tent open at both

ends with a window cut in one end. The window, when that end is laced and the other open, furnishes a

draught of air. The window should be covered with a flap which, in case of rain, can be tied down over it with

tapes. A great convenience in a tent is a pocket sewn inside of each wall, for boots, books, and such small

articles. The pocket should not be filled with anything so heavy as to cause the walls to sag. Another

convenience with a tent is a leather strap stretched from pole to pole, upon which to hang clothes, and another

is a strap to be buckled around the front tentpole, and which is studded with projecting hooks for your

lantern, waterbottle, and fieldglasses. This latter can be bough readymade at any military outfitter's.

Many men object to the wooden tentpin on account of its tendency to split, and carry pins made of iron.

With these, an inch below the head of the pin is a projecting barb which holds the tent rope. When the pin is

being driven in, the barb is out of reach of the mallet. Any blacksmith can beat out such pins, and if you can

afford the extra weight, they are better than those of ash. Also, if you can afford the weight, it is well to carry

a strip of waterproof or oilcloth for the floor of the tent to keep out dampness. All these things appertaining

to the tent should be tolled up in it, and the tent itself carried in a lightweight receptacle, with a running

The carryall has already been described. Of its contents, I consider first in importance the folding bed.

And second in importance I would place a folding chair. Many men scoff at a chair as a cumbersome luxury.

But after a hard day on foot or in the saddle, when you sit on the ground with your back to a rock and your

hands locked across your knees to keep yourself from sliding, or on a box with no rest for your spinal

column, you begin to think a chair is not a luxury, but a necessity. During the Cuban campaign, for a time I

was a member of General Sumner's mess. The general owned a folding chair, and whenever his back was

turned every one would make a rush to get into it. One time we were discussing what, in the light of our

experience of that campaign, we would take with us on our next, and all agreed, Colonel Howze, Captain

Andrews, and Major Harmon, that if one could only take one article it would be a chair. I carried one in

Manchuria, but it was of no use to me, as the other correspondents occupied it, relieving each other like

sentries on guard duty. I had to pin a sign on it, reading, "Don't sit on me," but no one ever saw the sign.

Once, in order to rest in my own chair, I weakly established a precedent by giving George Lynch a cigar to

allow me to sit down (on that march there was a mess contractor who supplied us even with cigars, and

occasionally with food), and after that, whenever a man wanted to smoke, he would commandeer my chair,

and unless bribed refuse to budge. This seems to argue the popularity of the contractor's cigars rather than

that of the chair, but, nevertheless, I submit that on a campaign the article second in importance for rest,

comfort, and content is a chair. The best I know is one invented by Major Elliott of the British army. I have

an Elliott chair that I have used four years, not only when camping out, but in my writingroom at home. It is

an armchair, and is as comfortable as any made. The objections to it are its weight, that it packs bulkily, and

takes down into too many pieces. Even with these disadvantages it is the best chair. It can be purchased at the

Army and Navy and AngloIndian stores in London. A chair of lighter weight and onefourth the bulk is the

Willisden chair, of green canvas and thin iron supports. It breaks in only two pieces, and is very comfortable.

Sir Harry Johnson, in his advice to explorers, makes a great point of their packing a chair. But he

recommends one known as the "Wellington," which is a canebottomed affair, heavy and cumbersome. Dr.

Harford, the instructor in outfit for the Royal Geographical Society, recommends a steamerchair, because it

can be used on shipboard and "can be easily carried afterward." If there be anything less easy to carry than a

deckchair I have not met it. One might as soon think of packing a folding stepladder. But if he has the

transport, the man who packs any reasonably light folding chair will not regret it.

As a rule, a cooking kit is built like every other cooking kit in that the utensils for cooking are carried in the

same pot that is used for boiling the water, and the top of the pot turns itself into a fryingpan. For eight years

I always have used the same kind of cooking kit, so I cannot speak of others with knowledge; but I have

always looked with envious eyes at the Preston cooking kit and water bottle. Why it has not already been

adopted by every army I do not understand, for in no army have I seen a kit as compact or as light, or one that

combines as many useful articles and takes up as little room. It is the invention of Captain Guy H. Preston,

The cooking kit I carry is, or was, in use in the German army. It is made of aluminum,weighs about as

much as a cigarettecase, and takes up as little room as would a high hat. It is a fryingpan and coffeepot

combined. From the Germans it has been borrowed by the Japanese, and one smaller than mine, but of the

same pattern, is part of the equipment of each Japanese soldier. On a day's march there are three things a man

must carry: his waterbottle, his food, which, with the soldier, is generally carried in a haversack, and his

cooking kit. Preston has succeeded most ingeniously in combining the waterbottle and the cooking kit, and I

believe by cutting his water bottle in half, he can make room in his coffeepot for the food. If he will do

this, he will solve the problem of carrying water, food, and the utensils for cooking the food and for boiling

the water in one receptacle, which can be carried from the shoulder by a single strap. The alteration I have

made for my own use in Captain Preston's waterbottle enables me to carry in the coffeepot one day's

In Tokio, before leaving for Manchuria, General Fukushima asked me to bring my entire outfit to the office

of the General Staff. I spread it out on the floor, and with unerring accuracy he selected from it the three

articles of greatest value. They were the Gold Medal cot, the Elliott chair, and Preston's waterbottle. He

asked if he could borrow these, and, understanding that he wanted to copy them for his own use, and

supposing that if he used them, he would, of course, make some restitution to the officers who had invented

them, I foolishly loaned them to him. Later, he issued them in numbers to the General Staff. As I felt, in a

manner, responsible, I wrote to the Secretary of War, saying I was sure the Japanese army did not wish to

benefit by these inventions without making some acknowledgment or return to the inventors. But the

Japanese War Office could not see the point I tried to make, and the General Staff wrote a letter in reply

asking why I had not directed my communication to General Fukushima, as it was not the Secretary of War,

but he, who had taken the articles. The fact that they were being issued without any return being made, did

not interest them. They passed cheerfully over the fact that the articles had been stolen, and were indignant,

not because I had accused a Japanese general of pilfering, but because I had accused the wrong general. The

letter was so insolent that I went to the General Staff Office and explained that the officer who wrote it, must

withdraw it, and apologize for it. Both of which things he did. In case the gentlemen whose inventions were

"borrowed" might, if they wished, take further steps in the matter, I sent the documents in the case, with the

exception of the letter which was withdrawn, to the chief of the General Staff in the United States and in

In importance after the bed, cooking kit, and chair, I would place these articles:

Two collapsible waterbuckets of rubber or canvas. Two collapsible brass lanterns, with extra isinglass sides.

Two boxes of sickroom candles. One dozen boxes of safety matches. One axe. The best I have seen is the

Marble Safety Axe, made at Gladstone, Mich. You can carry it in your hippocket, and you can cut down a

tree with it. One medicine case containing quinine, calomel, and Sun Cholera Mixture in tablets. Toiletcase

for razors, toothpowder, brushes, and paper. Folding bathtub of rubber in rubber case. These are

manufactured to fold into a space little larger than a cigarbox. Two towels old, and soft. Three cakes of

soap. One Jaeger blanket. One mosquito headbag. One extra pair of shoes, old and comfortable. One extra

pair of ridingbreeches. One extra pair of gaiters. The former regulation army gaiter of canvas, laced, rolls up

in a small compass and weighs but little. One flannel shirt. Gray least shows the dust. Two pairs of drawers.

For riding, the best are those of silk. Two undershirts, balbriggan or woollen. Three pairs of woollen socks.

Two linen handkerchiefs, large enough, if needed, to tie around the throat and protect the back of the neck.

One pair of pajamas, woollen, not linen. One housewife. Two briarwood pipes. Six bags of smoking tobacco;

Durham or Seal of North Carolina pack easily. One pad of writing paper. One fountain pen, SELFFILLING.

One bottle of ink, with screw top, held tight by a spring. One dozen linen envelopes. Stamps, wrapped in

oilsilk with mucilage side next to the silk. One stick sealingwax. In tropical countries mucilage on the flap

of envelopes sticks to everything except the envelope. One dozen elastic bands of the largest size. In packing

they help to compress articles like clothing into the smallest possible compass and in many other ways will be

found very useful. One pack of playingcards. Books. One revolver and six cartridges.

The reason for most of these articles is obvious. Some of them may need a word of recommendation. I place

the waterbuckets first in the list for the reason that I have found them one of my most valuable assets. With

one, as soon as you halt, instead of waiting for your turn at the well or waterhole, you can carry water to

your horse, and one of them once filled and set in the shelter of the tent, later saves you many steps. It also

can be used as a nosebag, and to carry fodder. I recommend the brass folding lantern, because those I have

tried of tin or aluminum have invariably broken. A lantern is an absolute necessity. When before daylight you

break camp, or hurry out in a wind storm to struggle with flying tentpegs, or when at night you wish to read

or play cards, a lantern with a stout frame and steady light is indispensable. The original cost of the

sickroom candles is more than that of ordinary candles, but they burn longer, are brighter, and take up much

less room. To protect them and the matches from dampness, or the sun, it is well to carry them in a rubber

spongebag. Any one who has forgotten to pack a towel will not need to be advised to take two. An old

sergeant of Troop G, Third Cavalry, once told me that if he had to throw away everything he carried in his

roll but one article, he would save his towel. And he was not a particularly fastidious sergeant either, but he

preferred a damp towel in his roll to damp clothes on his back. Every man knows the dreary halts in camp

when the rain pours outside, or the regiment is held in reserve. For times like these a pack of cards or a book

is worth carrying, even if it weighs as much as the plates from which it was printed. At present it is easy to

obtain all of the modern classics in volumes small enough to go into the coatpocket. In Japan, before

starting for China, we divided up among the correspondents Thomas Nelson Sons' and Doubleday, Page Co.'s

pocket editions of Dickens, Thackeray, and Lever, and as most of our time in Manchuria was spent locked up

In the list I have included a revolver, following out the old saying that "You may not need it for a long time,

but when you do need it, you want it damned quick." Except to impress guides and mule drivers, it is not an

essential article. In six campaigns I have carried one, and never used it, nor needed it but once, and then while

I was dodging behind the foremast it lay under tons of luggage in the hold. The number of cartridges I have

limited to six, on the theory that if in six shots you haven't hit the other fellow, he will have hit you, and you

This, I think, completes the list of articles that on different expeditions I either have found of use, or have

seen render good service to some one else. But the really wise man will pack none of the things enumerated

in this article. For the larger his kit, the less benefit he will have of it. It will all be taken from him. And

accordingly my final advice is to go forth emptyhanded, naked and unashamed, and borrow from your

friends. I have never tried that method of collecting an outfit, but I have seen never it fail, and of all travellers

{1} From "A Year from a Reporter's Note Book," copyright, 1897, by Harper Brothers.

{2} From "A Year from a Reporter's Note Book, copyright, 1897, Harper Brothers."

{3} For this "distinguished gallantry in action," James R. Church later received the medal of honor.

{4} Some of the names and initials on the trees are as follows: J. P. Allen; Lynch; Luke Steed; Happy Mack,

Rough Riders; Russell; Ward; E. M. Lewis, C, 9th Cav.; Alex; E. K. T.; J. P. E.; W. N. D.; R. D. R.; I. W. S.,

I certify that the following are the correct and highest prices realised at my sales by Public Auction during the

Pounds s. d. 14 lbs. Oatmeal 2 19 6 Condensed Milk, per tin 0 10 0 1 lb. Beef Fat 0 11 0 1 lb. Tin Coffee 0 17

0 2 lb. Tin Tongue 1 6 0 1 Sucking Pig 1 17 0 Eggs, per dozen 2 8 0 Fowls, each 0 18 6 4 Small Cucumbers 0

15 6 Green Mealies, each 0 3 8 Small plate Grapes 1 5 0 1 Small plate Apples 0 12 6 1 Plate Tomatoes 0 18 0

1 Vegetable Marrow 1 8 0 1 Plate Eschalots 0 11 0 1 Plate Potatoes 0 19 0 3 Small bunches Carrots 0 9 0 1

Glass Jelly 0 18 0 1 lb. Bottle Jam 1 11 0 1 lb. Tin Marmalade 1 1 0 1 dozen Matches 0 13 6 1 pkt. Cigarettes

1 5 0 50 Cigars 9 5 0 0.25 lb. Cake "Fair Maid" Tobacco 2 5 0 0.5 lb. Cake "Fair Maid" 3 5 0 1 lb. Sailors

{6} The top of the trunk is made of a single piece of leather with a rim that falls over the mouth of the trunk

and protects the contents from rain. The two iron rings by which each box is slung across the padded back of

the packhorse are fastened by rivetted straps to the rear top line of each trunk. On both ENDS of each trunk

near the top and back are two iron sockets. In these fit the staples that hold the poles for the bed. The staples

are made of iron in the shape of the numeral 9, the poles passing through the circle of the 9. The bed should

be four feet long three feet wide, of heavy canvas, strengthened by leather straps. At both ends are two

buckles which connect with straps on the top of each trunk. Along one side of the canvas is a pocket running

its length and open at both ends. Through this one of the poles passes and the other through a series of straps

that extend on the opposite side. These straps can be shortened or tightened to allow a certain "give" to the

canvas, which the ordinary stretcherbed does not permit. The advantage of this arrangement is in the fact

that it can be quickly put together and that it keeps the sleeper clear of the ground and safeguards him from