saying now that they did not do their
duty, or that they made errors of judgment so serious as to imperil the
lives of men, if not the success of the expedition. The responsibility
for the lack of medical supplies and hospital facilities, therefore, as
well as the responsibility for the lack of boats, mules, and wagons,
must rest either upon the War Department or upon the general in command.
If the latter made timely requisition for them, and for transports
enough to carry them to the Cuban coast, and failed to obtain either or
both, the War Department must be held accountable; while, on the other
hand, if General Shafter did not ask for medical supplies enough to meet
the probable wants of his army in a tropical climate and an unhealthful
environment, he must shoulder the responsibility for his own negligence
or want of foresight.

I shall now try to show how this lack of boats, mules, wagons, and
medical supplies affected General Shafter's command in the field.

II. The landing at Daiquiri and Siboney.

The points selected for the disembarkation of the army and the landing
of supplies were the best, perhaps, that could be found between Santiago
harbor and Guantanamo Bay; but they were little more, nevertheless, than
shallow notches in the coast-line, which afforded neither anchorage nor
shelter from the prevailing wind. There was one small pier erected by
the Spanish-American Iron Company at Daiquiri, but at Siboney there were
no landing facilities whatever, and the strip of beach at the bottom of
the wedge-shaped notch in the precipitous wall of the coast was hardly
more than one hundred yards in length. The water deepened so suddenly
and abruptly at a distance of fifty yards from the shore that there was
practically no anchorage, and General Shafter's fleet of more than
thirty transports had to lie in what was virtually an open roadstead and
drift back and forth with the currents and tides. The prevailing winds
were from the east and southeast, and the long swell which rolled in
from the Caribbean Sea broke in heavy and at times dangerous surf upon
the narrow strip of unsheltered beach where the army had to land. All of
these local conditions were known, or might have been known, to General
Shafter before he left Tampa; but when he arrived off the coast they
seemed to take him wholly by surprise. He had brought with him neither
surf-boats, nor steam-launches, nor suitable lighters, nor materials
with which to con