Key West, for
example, Mr. Scovel, one of the most daring and enterprising of the war
correspondents, landed from a despatch-boat on the coast of Cuba in the
night, with the intention of making his way to the camp of General
Gomez. As he had not had a previous understanding with the latter, no
arrangements had been made to meet him, he could get no horses, and,
with only two or three companions, he walked eighty miles through
tropical forests and swamps, dodging Spanish sentinels and guerrillas,
living wholly upon plantains and roots, and sleeping most of the time
out of doors in a hammock slung between two trees. He finally succeeded
in obtaining horses, reached the insurgent camp, had an interview with
General Gomez, rode back to the coast at a point previously agreed upon,
signaled to his despatch-boat, was taken on board, and returned safely
to Key West after an absence of two weeks, in the course of which he had
not once tasted bread nor slept in a bed.

Upon the record of such an achievement as this most men would have been
satisfied, for a time, to rest; but Mr. Scovel, with untiring energy,
went from Key West to the coast of Cuba and back three times in the next
seven days. On the last of these expeditions he joined a landing force
carrying arms and ammunition to the insurgents, participated in a hot
skirmish with the Spanish troops, wrote an account of the adventure that
same night while at sea in a small, tossing boat on his way back to Key
West, and filed six thousand words in the Key West cable-station at two
o'clock in the morning.

I speak of this particular case of journalistic enterprise, not because
it is especially noteworthy or exceptional, but because it illustrates
the endurance and the capacity for sustained toil in unfavorable
circumstances, which are quite as characteristic of the modern war
correspondent as are his courage and his alert readiness for any
emergency or any opportunity.

Owing to the distance of the seat of war from the American coast and the
absence of telegraphic communication between Cuba and the mainland,
newspapers that made any serious attempt to get quick and exclusive
information from the front had not only to send correspondents into the
field, but to furnish them with means of moving rapidly from place to
place and of forwarding their despatches promptly to an American
telegraph office or a West Indian cable-station. Every prominent New
York paper, therefore, had at l