ons another
echelon of two companies, so situated as to cross their fire with
the others. Doubtless the block-house and trenches at Fort San Juan
proper were only held by three or four hundred men; they were taken
by the Sixth and Sixteenth Infantry under Hawkins's immediate
command; and they formed but one point in the line of hills,
trenches, ranch-houses, and block-houses which the Spaniards held,
and from which we drove them. When the city capitulated later, over
8,000 unwounded troops and over 16,000 rifles and carbines were
surrendered; by that time the marines and sailors had of course
gone, and the volunteers had disbanded.

In all these figures I have taken merely the statements from the
Spanish side. I am inclined to think the actual numbers were much
greater than those here given. Lieutenant Wiley, in his book _In Cuba
with Shafter_, which is practically an official statement, states
that nearly 11,000 Spanish troops were surrendered; and this is the
number given by the Spaniards themselves in the remarkable letter
the captured soldiers addressed to General Shafter, which Wiley
quotes in full. Lieutenant Tejeiro, in his chap. xiv., explains that
the volunteers had disbanded before the end came, and the marines
and sailors had of course gone, while nearly a thousand men had been
killed or captured or had died of wounds and disease, so that there
must have been at least 14,000 all told. Subtracting the
reinforcements who arrived on the 2nd, this would mean about 10,000
Spaniards present on the 1st; in which case Kent and Wheeler were
opposed by at least equal numbers.

In dealing with the Spanish losses, Lieutenant Tejeiro contradicts
himself. He puts their total loss on this day at 593, including 94
killed, 121 missing, and 2 prisoners--217 in all. Yet he states that
of the 520 men at Caney but 80 got back, the remaining 440 being
killed, captured, or missing. When we captured the city we found in
the hospitals over 2,000 seriously wounded and sick Spaniards; on
making inquiries, I found that over a third were wounded. From these
facts I feel that it is safe to put down the total Spanish loss in
battle as at least 1,200, of whom over a thousand were killed and
wounded.

Lieutenant Tejeiro, while rightly claiming credit for the courage
shown by the Spaniards, also praises the courage and resolution of
the Americans, saying that they