ated in your account*)
across the lane and went with it. Advancing with the troop,
I began immediately to pick up troopers of the Ninth Cavalry
who had drifted from their commands, and soon had so many
they demanded nearly all my attention. With a line thus made
up, the colored troopers on the left and yours on the right,
the portion of Kettle Hill on the right of the red-roofed
house was first carried. I very shortly thereafter had a
strong firing-line established on the crest nearest the
enemy, from the corner of the fence around the house to the
low ground on the right of the hill, which fired into the
strong line of conical straw hats, whose brims showed just
above the edge of the Spanish trench directly west of that
part of the hill.** These hats made a fine target! I had
placed a young officer of your regiment in charge of the
portion of the line on top of the hill, and was about to go
to the left to keep the connection of the brigade--Captain
McBlain, Ninth Cavalry, just then came up on the hill from
the left and rear--when the shot struck that put me out of
the fight.

* Note: The other two must have followed on their own initiative.

** Note: These were the Spaniards in the trenches we carried when
we charged from Kettle Hill, after the infantry had taken the San
Juan block-house.

There were many wholly erroneous accounts of the Guasimas fight
published at the time, for the most part written by newspaper-men who
were in the rear and utterly ignorant of what really occurred. Most of
these accounts possess a value so purely ephemeral as to need no
notice. Mr. Stephen Bonsal, however, in his book, "The Fight for
Santiago," has cast one of them in a more permanent form; and I shall
discuss one or two of his statements.

Mr. Bonsal was not present at the fight, and, indeed, so far as I
know, he never at any time was with the cavalry in action. He puts in
his book a map of the supposed skirmish ground; but it bears to the
actual scene of the fight only the well-known likeness borne by
Monmouth to Macedon. There was a brook on the battle-ground, and there
is a brook in Mr. Bonsal's map. The real brook, flowing down from the
mountains, crossed the valley road and ran down between it and the
hill-trail, going nowhere near the latter. The Bonsal brook flows at
right angles to the course of the real brook and cr