nt to the bottom; Bucky O'Neill plunging in, in full
uniform, to save them, but in vain.

However, by the late afternoon we had all our men, with what
ammunition and provisions they could themselves carry, landed, and
were ready for anything that might turn up.

III

GENERAL YOUNG'S FIGHT AT LAS GUASIMAS

Just before leaving Tampa we had been brigaded with the First (white)
and Tenth (colored) Regular Cavalry under Brigadier-General S. B. M.
Young. We were the Second Brigade, the First Brigade consisting of the
Third and Sixth (white), and the Ninth (colored) Regular Cavalry under
Brigadier-General Sumner. The two brigades of the cavalry division
were under Major-General Joseph Wheeler, the gallant old Confederate
cavalry commander.

General Young was--and is--as fine a type of the American fighting
soldier as a man can hope to see. He had been in command, as Colonel,
of the Yellowstone National Park, and I had seen a good deal of him in
connection therewith, as I was President of the Boone and Crockett
Club, an organization devoted to hunting big game, to its
preservation, and to forest preservation. During the preceding winter,
while he was in Washington, he had lunched with me at the Metropolitan
Club, Wood being one of the other guests. Of course, we talked of the
war, which all of us present believed to be impending, and Wood and I
told him we were going to make every effort to get in, somehow; and he
answered that we must be sure to get into his brigade, if he had one,
and he would guarantee to show us fighting. None of us forgot the
conversation. As soon as our regiment was raised General Young applied
for it to be put in his brigade. We were put in; and he made his word
good; for he fought and won the first fight on Cuban soil.

Yet, even though under him, we should not have been in this fight at
all if we had not taken advantage of the chance to disembark among the
first troops, and if it had not been for Wood's energy in pushing our
regiment to the front.

On landing we spent some active hours in marching our men a quarter
of a mile or so inland, as boat-load by boat-load they disembarked.
Meanwhile one of the men, Knoblauch, a New Yorker, who was a great
athlete and a champion swimmer, by diving in the surf off the dock,
recovered most of the rifles which had been lost when the boat-load of
colored cavalry capsized. The country would have offered very