of his staff, the Spanish
general appeared to be a very broken man. He seems to be about sixty years
of age, and of frail constitution, although stern resolution shone in
every feature. The lines are strongly marked, and his face is deep drawn,
as if with physical pain.

"General Toral replied with an air of abstraction to the words addressed
to him, and when he accompanied General Shafter at the head of the escort
into the city, to take formal possession of Santiago, he spoke but few
words. The appealing faces of the starving refugees streaming back into
the city did not move him, nor did the groups of Spanish soldiers lining
the road and gazing curiously at the fair-skinned, stalwart-framed
conquerors. Only once did a faint shadow of a smile lurk about the corners
of his mouth.

"This was when the cavalcade passed through a barbed-wire entanglement. No
body of infantry could ever have got through this defence alive, and
General Shafter's remark about its resisting power found the first
gratifying echo in the defeated general's heart.

"Farther along the desperate character of the Spanish resistance, as
planned, amazed our officers. Although primitive, it was well done. Each
approach to the city was thrice barricaded and wired, and the barricades
were high enough and sufficiently strong to withstand shrapnel. The
slaughter among our troops would have been frightful had it ever become
necessary to storm the city.

"Around the hospitals and public buildings and along the west side of the
line there were additional works and emplacements for guns, though no guns
were mounted in them.

"The streets of Santiago are crooked, with narrow lines of one-storied
houses, most of which are very dilapidated, but every veranda of every
house was thronged by its curious inhabitants,--disarmed soldiers. These
were mostly of the lower classes.

"Few expressions of any kind were heard along the route. Here and there
was a shout for free Cuba from some Cuban sympathiser, but as a rule there
were only low mutterings. The better class of Spaniards remained indoors,
or satisfied their curiosity from behind drawn blinds.

"Several Spanish ladies in tumble-down carriages averted their faces as we
passed. The squalor in the streets was frightful. The bones of dead horses
and other animals were bleaching in the streets, and buzzards, as tame as
sparrows, hopped aside to let us pass.

"The windows of the hospitals, in which there are ov