k-green tropical vegetation, and the higher peaks broken in places by
cliffs or rocky escarpments and rising into the region of summer clouds,
is one hardly to be surpassed, I think, in the tropics. The average
height of this range is three or four thousand feet; but in many places
it is much greater than this, and the summit of the peak of Turquino,
about midway between Cape Cruz and Santiago, is eighty-four hundred feet
above the level of the sea.

Our captain thought that we should be off the entrance to Santiago
harbor about three o'clock Saturday morning, and at half-past three I
was on the bridge. There was not a sign, as yet, of dawn, and although I
could make out faintly the loom of high land to the northward, it was so
dark on the water that nothing could be distinguished at a distance of
five hundred yards, and in the absence of all lights on the coast it
was almost impossible to determine our exact position. Somewhere ahead
of us,--or perhaps around us,--in the impenetrable gloom, were twelve or
fifteen ships of war; but they were cruising about in silence and
darkness, and the first evidence that we should probably have of their
proximity would be the glare of a search-light and the thunder of a gun.
About four o'clock the lookout forward shouted to the captain, "Vessel
on the port bow, sir," and a large, dark object stole silently out
toward us from under the shadow of the land. I took it, at first, for a
gunboat; but it proved to be the transport _Santiago_, which had not yet
disembarked her troops and was cruising aimlessly back and forth, as we
were, waiting for daylight.

At a quarter past four the sky in the east began to grow lighter, and as
the hidden sun climbed swiftly to the horizon the world about us began
to assume form and color. Almost directly in front of us were two fine
groups of high, forest-clad mountains, separated by an interval of
perhaps ten or fifteen miles. In this gap and nearer the sea was a long
stretch of lower, but still high, table-land, which extended from one
group of mountains to the other and seemed to form the outer rampart of
the coast. About the middle of this rocky, flat-topped rampart there was
a deep, narrow notch, on the eastern side of which I could see with a
glass a huge grayish-stone building, elevated a little above the level
of the table-land on one side and extending down the steep declivity of
the notch in a series of titanic steps on the other. I hardly nee