st and 2d, 1898.

Testimony is adduced to show that these "marvels of warfare" actually
fought without officers and executed movements under a galling fire
which would have puzzled a recruit on parade ground. The Boston
Journal of the 31st, in its account, gives the following
interview-Mason Mitchell (white) said:

"We were in a valley when we started, but made at once for a trail
running near the top of a ridge called La Quasina, several hundred
feet high, which, with several others parallel to it, extended in the
direction of Santiago. By a similar trail near the top of the ridge to
our right several companies of Negro troopers of the Ninth and Tenth
United States Cavalry marched in scout formation, as we did. We had an
idea about where the Spaniards were and depended upon Cuban scouts to
warn us but they did not do it. At about 8:30 o'clock in the morning
we met a volley from the enemy, who were ambushed, not only on our
ridge, but on the one to the right, beyond the Negro troops, and the
Negro soldiers were under a cross fire. That is how Capt. Capron and
Hamilton Fish were killed."

It says: "Handsome young Sergt. Stewart, the Rough Rider protege of
Henry W. Maxwell, when he was telling of the fight in the ambush, gave
it as his opinion that the Rough Riders would have been whipped out if
the Tenth Cavalry (colored) had not come up just in time to drive
the Spaniards back. 'I'm a Southerner, from New Mexico, and I never
thought much of the 'nigger' before. Now I know what they are made of.
I respect them. They certainly can fight like the devil and they don't
care for bullets any more than they do for the leaves that shower down
on them. I've changed my opinion of the colored folks, for all of the
men that I saw fighting, there were none to beat the Tenth Cavalry and
the colored infantry at Santiago, and I don't mind saying so.'"

The description which follows is interesting: "It was simply grand to
see how those young fellows, and old fellows, too, men who were rich
and had been the petted of society in the city, walk up and down the
lines while their clothes were powdered by the dust from exploding
shells and torn by broken fragments cool as could be and yelling to
the men to lay low and take good aim, or directing some squad to take
care of a poor devil who was wounded. Why, at times there when the
bullets were so thick they mowed the grass down like grass cutters in
places, the officers stood looking at the