When we reached the entrance to Santiago harbor in the Red Cross steamer
_State of Texas_ on the 25th of June, the Fifth Army-Corps--or most of
it--had already landed, and was marching toward Santiago along the
interior road by way of Guasimas and Sevilla. The landing had been made,
Admiral Sampson told me, without the least opposition from the
Spaniards, but there had been a fight, on the day before our arrival,
between General Wheeler's advance and a body of troops supposed to be
the rear-guard of the retiring enemy, at a place called Guasimas, three
or four miles from Siboney, on the Santiago road. Details of the fight,
he said, had not been received, but it was thought to be nothing more
than an unimportant skirmish.

In reply to my question whether he had any orders for us, or any
suggestions to make with regard to our movements, he said that, as
there seemed to be nothing for the Red Cross to do in the vicinity of
Santiago, he should advise us to go to Guantanamo Bay, where Captain
McCalla had opened communications with the insurgents under General
Perez, and where we should probably find Cuban refugees suffering for
food. Acting upon this suggestion, we got under way promptly, steamed
into the little cove of Siboney to take a look at the place and to land
Mr. Louis Kempner of the Post-Office Department, whom we had brought
from Key West, and then proceeded eastward to Guantanamo Bay.

CHAPTER VII

THE FIGHT AT GUANTANAMO

As the southeastern coast of Cuba is high and bold, with deep water
extending close up to the line of surf, vessels going back and forth
between Santiago and Guantanamo run very near to the land; and the
ever-changing panorama of tropical forest and cloud-capped mountain
which presents itself to the eye as the steamer glides swiftly past,
within a mile of the rock-terraced bluffs and headlands, is a constant
source of surprise and delight, even to the most experienced voyager. It
is an extremely beautiful and varied coast. In the foreground, only a
rifle-shot away across the blue undulating floor of the Caribbean, rises
a long terraced mesa, fronting on the sea, with its rocky base in a
white smother of foaming surf, and its level summit half hidden by a
drooping fringe of dark-green chaparral and vines. Over the cyclopean
wall of this mesa appear the rounded tops of higher and more distant
foot-hills, densely clad in robes of perennial verdure, while beyond and
above them all, at a