ke, and therefore posted himself on the hill at their junction, where
he could command both.

On the afternoon of the 23d, Cuban scouts reported the position of the
enemy to General Wheeler, who was then in command of our advance, and,
after a council of war, it was decided to attack simultaneously by both
roads. Early on the morning of Friday, June 24, therefore, General
Young, with the First and Tenth dismounted cavalry, marched out of
Siboney on the main road to Santiago, and proceeded up the valley of the
little stream which empties into the sea through the Siboney notch;
while Colonel Wood, at the head of the Rough Riders, climbed the end of
the rampart, on the western side of the notch, and advanced toward
Guasimas by the mesa trail, which is considerably higher than the main
road and lies half a mile to a mile farther west.

The two columns encountered the enemy at about the same time. The Rough
Riders, under Colonel Wood, began the attack on the mesa trail, and a
few moments later General Young's command, on the Siboney-Santiago road,
opened fire with three Hotchkiss mountain guns and began the ascent of
the hill from the valley. The whole country was so overgrown with trees,
shrubs, and tropical vines that it was almost impossible to see an
object fifty yards away, and as the Spaniards used smokeless powder, it
was extremely difficult to ascertain their position, or even to know
exactly where our own troops were. Colonel Wood deployed his regiment to
the right and left of the trail, and endeavored, as he advanced, to
extend his line so as to form a junction with General Young's command on
the right, and at the same time outflank the enemy on the left; but the
tropical undergrowth was so dense and luxuriant that neither of the
attacking columns could see the other, and all that they could do, in
the way of mutual support and cooeperation, was to push ahead toward the
junction of the two roads, firing, almost at random, into the bushes and
vine-tangled thickets from which the Mauser bullets seemed to come.
Colonel Roosevelt told me that once he caught a glimpse of the
Spaniards, drawn up in line of battle; but during the greater part of
the engagement they were concealed in the chaparral, and could be seen
only when they broke from cover and fled, to escape the searching fire
of our steadily advancing line. While Colonel Wood, on the left, was
driving the enemy out of the jungles intersected by the mesa trail,
G