the country, and even of the storms, which
hitherto I had regarded purely as enemies.

The surroundings of the city of Santiago are very grand. The
circling mountains rise sheer and high. The plains are threaded by
rapid winding brooks and are dotted here and there with quaint
villages, curiously picturesque from their combining traces of an
outworn old-world civilization with new and raw barbarism. The tall,
graceful, feathery bamboos rise by the water's edge, and elsewhere,
even on the mountain-crests, where the soil is wet and rank enough;
and the splendid royal palms and cocoanut palms tower high above the
matted green jungle.

Generally the thunder-storms came in the afternoon, but once I saw
one at sunrise, driving down the high mountain valleys toward us. It
was a very beautiful and almost terrible sight; for the sun rose
behind the storm, and shone through the gusty rifts, lighting the
mountain-crests here and there, while the plain below lay shrouded in
the lingering night. The angry, level rays edged the dark clouds with
crimson, and turned the downpour into sheets of golden rain; in the
valleys the glimmering mists were tinted every wild hue; and the
remotest heavens were lit with flaming glory.

One day General Lawton, General Wood and I, with Ferguson and poor
Tiffany, went down the bay to visit Morro Castle. The shores were
beautiful, especially where there were groves of palms and of the
scarlet-flower tree, and the castle itself, on a jutting headland,
overlooking the sea and guarding the deep, narrow entrance to the bay,
showed just what it was, the splendid relic of a vanished power and a
vanished age. We wandered all through it, among the castellated
battlements, and in the dungeons, where we found hideous rusty
implements of torture; and looked at the guns, some modern and some
very old. It had been little hurt by the bombardment of the ships.
Afterward I had a swim, not trusting much to the shark stories. We
passed by the sunken hulks of the Merrimac and the Reina Mercedes,
lying just outside the main channel. Our own people had tried to sink
the first and the Spaniards had tried to sink the second, so as to
block the entrance. Neither attempt was successful.

On August 6th we were ordered to embark, and next morning we sailed
on the transport Miami. General Wheeler was with us and a squadron of
the Third Cavalry under Major Jackson. The General put the policing
and management of the ship into