Puslapio vaizdai
PDF
„ePub“
[graphic][merged small]

had no intention of running to the sea. They ran only to the trench forty feet farther down and jumped into it, and instantly turning, began pumping lead at the enemy. Since five that morning Wood had been running about on his feet, his clothes stuck to him with sweat and the mud and water of forded streams, and as he rose he limped slightly. "My, but I'm tired!" he said, in a tone of the most acute surprise, and as though that fact was the only one that was weighing on his mind. He limped over to the trench in which the men were now busily firing off their rifles and waved a ridingcrop he carried at the trench they had abandoned. He was standing as Crane had been standing, in silhouette against the skyline. "Come back, boys," we heard him shouting. "The other men can't withdraw, and so you mustn't. It looks bad. Come on, get out of that!" What made it more amusing was that, although Wood had, like everyone else, discarded his coat and wore a strange uniform of gray shirt, white ridingbreeches, and a cow-boy Stetson, with no insignia of rank, not even straps pinned to his shirt, still the men instantly accepted his authority. They looked at him on the crest of the hill waving his stick persuasively at the grave-like trench at his feet, and then with a shout scampered back to it.

After that, as I had a bad attack of sciatica and no place to sleep and nothing to eat, I accepted Crane's offer of a blanket

and coffee at his bivouac near El Poso. On account of the sciatica I was not able to walk fast, and, although for over a mile of the way the trail was under fire, Crane and Hare each insisted on giving me an arm, and kept step with my.stumblings. Whenever I protested and refused their sacrifice and pointed out the risk they were taking they smiled as at the ravings of a naughty child, and when I lay down in the road and refused to budge unless they left me, Crane called the attention of Hare to the effect of the setting sun behind the palm-trees. All these little things that one remembers to the reader seem very little indeed, but they were very vivid at the moment, and for seven years I have always thought of them as having stretched over a long extent of time and territory. Before I revisited San Juan I would have said that the distance along the road from the point where I left the artillery to where I joined Wood was threequarters of a mile. When I paced it a few weeks ago I found the distance was about seventy-five yards. I do not urge my stupidity or my extreme terror as a proof that others would be as greatly confused, but, if only for the sake of the stupid ones, it seems a pity that the landmarks of San Juan should not be rescued from the jungle, and a few sign-posts placed upon the hills. It is true that the great battles of the Civil War and those of the present one in Manchuria, where the men killed and wounded in a day

[graphic]

The same spot as it appears to-day.
The figure in the picture is standing in what remains of the trench.

outnumber all those who fought on both
sides at San Juan, make that battle read
like a skirmish. But the Spanish War had
its results. At least it made Cuba into a
republic, and so enriched or burdened us
with colonies that our republic changed into
something like an empire. But I do not
urge that. It will never be because San
Juan changed our foreign policy that peo-
ple will visit the spot, and will send from it
picture postal cards. The human interest
alone will keep San Juan alive. The men
who fought there came from every State in
our country and from every class of our
social life. We sent there the best of our
regular army, and with them, cow-boys,
clerks, bricklayers, football players, three
future commanders of the greater army that
followed that war, the future Governor of
Cuba, future commanders of the Philip-
pines, the commander of our forces in
China, a future President of the United
States. And, whether these men when
they returned to their homes again became
clerks and millionaires and dentists, or rose
to be presidents and mounted policemen,
they all remember very kindly the days they
lay huddled together in the trenches on that
hot and glaring sky-line. And there must
be many more besides who hold the place
in memory. There are few in the United
States so poor in relatives and friends who
did not in his or her heart send a substitute
to Cuba. For these it seems as though San

Juan might be better preserved, not as it is, for already its aspect is too far changed to wish for that, but as it was. The efforts already made to keep the place in memory and to honor the Americans who died there are the public park which I have mentioned, the already crumbling monument on San Juan, and one other monument at Guasimas to the regulars and Rough Riders who were killed there. To these monuments the Society of Santiago now intends to add four more, which will mark the landingplace of the army at Daquairi and the fights at Guasimas, El Caney, and San Juan Hill. The society appointed Gen. S. B. M. Young and Col. Webb Hayes a committee to visit Cuba and select proper sites for the monuments. This they have done, and President Palma, in behalf of Cuba, has promised to present the cannons which are to mark these sites. This is an excellent idea, and one which in the hands of the Society of Santiago, which is composed of the officers and men who caused the surrender of that city, will be carried to success.

But I believe even more than this might be done to preserve to the place its proper values. These values are sentimental, historical, and possibly to the military student, educational. If to-day there were erected at Daiquairi, Siboney, Guasimas, El Pozo, El Caney, and on and about San Juan a dozen iron or bronze tablets that would tell from where certain regiments advanced, what

[graphic][merged small]

posts they held, how many or how few were the men who held those positions, how near they were to the trenches of the enemy, and by whom these men were commanded, I am sure the place would reconstruct itself and would breathe with interest, not only for the returning volunteer, but for any casual tourist. As it is, the history of the fight and the reputation of the men who fought is now at the mercy of the caretaker of the park and the Cuban "guides" from the hotel. The caretaker speaks only Spanish, and, considering the amount of misinformation the guides disseminate, it is a pity when they are talking to Americans, they are not forced to use the same language. To-day, Carlos Portuondo is the official guardian of San Juan Hill. He is an aged Cuban, and he fought through the Ten Years' War, but during the last insurrection and the Spanish-American War he not only was not near San Juan, but was not even on the Island of Cuba. He is a

charming old person, and so is his aged wife. Their chief concern in life, when I saw them, was to sell me a pair of breeches made of palm-fibre which Carlos had worn throughout the entire ten years of battle. The vicissitudes of those trousers he recited to me in great detail, and he very

properly regarded them as of historic value. But of what happened at San Juan he knew nothing, and when I asked him why he held his present post and occupied the Block-House, he said, "To keep the cows out of the park." When I asked him where the Americans had camped, he pointed carefully from the back door of the Block-House to the foot of his kitchengarden. I assured him that under no stress of terror could the entire American army have been forced into his back yard, and showed him where it had stretched along the ridge of hills for five miles. He politely but unmistakably showed that he thought I was a liar. From the Venus Hotel there are two

[graphic]

One of the sugar-kettles on Little San Juan Hill which Colonel Roosevelt rechristened Kettle Hill.

guides, old Casanova and Jean Casanova, his languid and good-natured son, a youth of sixteen years. Old Casanova, like most Cubans, is not inclined to give much credit for what they did in Cuba to the Americans. After all, he says, they came only just as the Cubans themselves were about to conquer the Spaniards, and by a lucky chance received the surrender and then claimed all the credit. As other Cubans told me, "Had the Americans left us alone a few weeks longer, we would have ended the war." How they were to have taken Havana, and sunk Cervera's fleet, and why they were not among those present when our men charged San Juan, I did not inquire. Old Casanova, again like other Cubans, ranks the fighting qualities of the Spaniard much higher than those of the American. This is only human. It must be annoying to a Cuban to remember that after he had for three years fought the Spaniard, the Yankee in eight weeks received his surrender and began to ship him home. The way Casanova describes the fight at El Caney is as follows:

"The Americans thought they could capture El Caney in one day, but the brave General Toral fought so good that it was six days before the Americans could make the Spaniards surrender." The statement is correct except as regards the length of time during which the fight lasted. The Americans did make the mistake of think

ing they could eat up El Caney in an hour and then march through it to San Juan. Owing to the splendid courage of Toral and his few troops our soldiers, under two of our best generals, were held in check from seven in the morning until two in the afternoon. But the difference between seven hours of one day and six days is considerable. Still, at present at San Juan that is the sort of information upon which the patriotic and puzzled American tourist is fed.

Young Casanova, the only other authority in Santiago, is not so sure of his facts as is his father, and is willing to learn. He went with me to hold my pony while I took the photographs that accompar this rticle, and I listened with gre rest to his accounts of the battle. Finally he made a statement that was correct. "How did you happen to get that right?" I asked.

"Yesterday," he said, "I guided Colonel Hayes here, and while I guided him he explained it to me."

And so the lack of knowledge and jealousy of those who are supposed to cherish it, with the help of the tropical undergrowth, are surely destroying the identity of San Juan Hill. It is a pity. The place where so many of our men fought and fell, and still lie, should not disappear, or, if it must, it seems as though it deserved a more honorable interment than Cuban pig-pens and kitchen-gardens.

[graphic]

I

THE GOOD-TICKET

By Lucia Chamberlain

ILLUSTRATIONS BY MAY WILSON PRESTON

T was the visiting superintendent who instituted the melancholy innovation. Harrington suspected his unreliable character the moment he opened the door. He did not like the way the superintendent took his hat off. There was something inexplicably irritating in the way he parted the tails of his "Prince Albert" and let himself down upon a chair. Harrington found himself unconsciously adding the superintendent's features to a series of asses' ears he had scrawled across his composition book. Visiting superintendents were connected in his mind with cataclysms-arithmetic examinations or class punishments for something the class had forgotten it had doneand he watched warily. But this visitor only hitched his chair around with his back to the class, and let the pretty vice-principal, who was also the teacher, talk to him.

pine-nuts were frequently brought to book. Harrington, with his feet close-twined around the desk-irons, his chin almost touching the desk, was finishing the super

m.w. P. os.

There was something inexplicably irritating in the
way he parted the tails of his "Prince Albert"
and let himself down upon a chair.

This seemed innocent enough. Suspicion began to be soothed to sleep. The class was happily employed on its own illicit affairs. Just in front of Harrington, Teddy Cavannagh was cracking pine-nuts by his own patent method. Harrington envied him the idea. Teddy lifted the lid of his desk a little, ranged a row of pine-nuts on the rim of the desk beneath, and then thoughtfully and heavily rested his elbows on the desk top, as if in an ecstasy of study. Simultaneously the shells went off like small artillery, and less ingenious harborers of

intendent with hoofs and a tail when the sound of his own name in the high pipe of the pretty vice-principal pierced his dream. He came to with a start, but she was not addressing him; only her voice, so in the habit of being lifted to penetrate, was penetrating even when she lowered it. It was to the superintendent she had spoken. Harrington

sat up. The principal was punctuating emphatic remarks by nods of her head and dabs of her pencil. Harrington knew the subject of conversation to be himself. He wondered which one of his recent escapades the principal had pitched upon; and

with a shiver of excited apprehension he hoped they would devise a penalty sufficiently awful to be worthy of it. Then the viceprincipal pounded the bell.

"Now, children," she said, and smiled and fluttered at the class. The superintendent hitched his chair around and rose carefully, as if he had apprehensions of cracking himself. He said that he and Miss Smith agreed that it was better to encourage obedience than to point the finger at wrong-doing. He was, he said, about to add a pleasant little incentive to the class's endeavor for good deportment.

The class yawned, and wondered if this were a new way of introducing them to an

« AnkstesnisTęsti »