22nd the welcome order for landing came.

We did the landing as we had done everything else--that is, in a
scramble, each commander shifting for himself. The port at which we
landed was called Daiquiri, a squalid little village where there had
been a railway and iron-works. There were no facilities for landing,
and the fleet did not have a quarter the number of boats it should
have had for the purpose. All we could do was to stand in with the
transports as close as possible, and then row ashore in our own few
boats and the boats of the war-ships. Luck favored our regiment. My
former naval aide, while I was Assistant Secretary of the Navy,
Lieutenant Sharp, was in command of the Vixen, a converted yacht; and
everything being managed on the go-as-you-please principle, he steamed
by us and offered to help put us ashore. Of course, we jumped at the
chance. Wood and I boarded the Vixen, and there we got Lieutenant
Sharp's black Cuban pilot, who told us he could take our transport
right in to within a few hundred yards of the land. Accordingly, we
put him aboard; and in he brought her, gaining at least a mile and a
half by the manoeuvre. The other transports followed; but we had our
berth, and were all right.

There was plenty of excitement to the landing. In the first place,
the smaller war-vessels shelled Daiquiri, so as to dislodge any
Spaniards who might be lurking in the neighborhood, and also shelled
other places along the coast, to keep the enemy puzzled as to our
intentions. Then the surf was high, and the landing difficult; so that
the task of getting the men, the ammunition, and provisions ashore was
not easy. Each man carried three days' field rations and a hundred
rounds of ammunition. Our regiment had accumulated two rapid-fire Colt
automatic guns, the gift of Stevens, Kane, Tiffany, and one or two
others of the New York men, and also a dynamite gun, under the
immediate charge of Sergeant Borrowe. To get these, and especially the
last, ashore, involved no little work and hazard. Meanwhile, from
another transport, our horses were being landed, together with the
mules, by the simple process of throwing them overboard and letting
them swim ashore, if they could. Both of Wood's got safely through.
One of mine was drowned. The other, little Texas, got ashore all
right. While I was superintending the landing at the ruined dock, with
Bucky O'Neill, a boatful of colored infantry soldiers capsized, and
two of the men we