es and
rifle-pits on the San Juan heights, but from hundreds of trees along the
trail, in which the enemy had posted sharp-shooters.

So far as I know, riflemen had never before been posted in trees to
check the advance of an army through a broken and forest-clad country;
but the scheme was a good one, and it was carried out with thoughtful
attention to every detail. The sharp-shooters were generally hidden in
carefully prepared nests of leaves; some of them had tunics of fresh
palm-leaves tied around their bodies from the shoulders down, so that at
a little distance they could not be distinguished from the foliage of
the trees in which they were concealed; and in a few cases that were
reported to me they wore under their leafy tunics double canvas jackets
filled with sand and carefully quilted, as a partial protection from
bullets. This swarm of tree-men formed the Spanish skirmish-line, and a
most dangerous and effective line it was, for the reason that it could
be neither seen, driven in, nor dislodged. The hidden marksmen used
Mauser rifles with smokeless powder, and although our men heard the
reports and were killed or disabled by the projectiles, they had no
guide or clue whatever to the location of their assailants. A
skirmish-line in thickets or clumps of chaparral on the ground might
have been driven back as our army advanced, and thus our rear would have
been all the time secure from attack; but a skirmish-line hidden in
tree-tops was as dangerous to the rear as to the front, and a soldier
pressing forward toward what he supposed to be the enemy's position was
just as likely to get a Mauser bullet in his back as in his breast.
Scores of wounded men who were brought into the First Division
field-hospital on Friday and Saturday had never seen a Spanish
intrenchment, or had even so much as a glimpse of a Spanish soldier.

In spite of the deadly fire to which they were subjected from front,
sides, and rear, our troops pushed on, as rapidly as the congested state
of the trail would permit, toward the ford of the San Juan River. The
loss which our advance sustained at this point was greatly increased by
the sending up of an observation balloon, which hung over the road, just
above the trees, and not only attracted the fire of the Spaniards in
front, but served their artillerymen as a target and a range-finder. It
was an even better firing guide than the sheets of iron or zinc roofing
which they had put up in some o