rs Spain had shown herself as intolerant and
oppressive as at home. When the other nations of Europe were loosening the
reins of their colonial policy, Spain kept hers unyieldingly rigid.
Colonial revolution was the result, and she lost all her possessions in
America but the islands of Cuba and Porto Rico. Yet she had learned no
lesson,--she seemed incapable of profiting by experience,--and the old
policy of tyranny and rapacity was exercised over these islands until
Cuba, the largest of them, was driven into insurrection.

In attempting to suppress this insurrection Spain adopted the cruel
methods she had exercised against the Moriscos in the sixteenth century,
ignoring the fact that the twentieth century was near its dawn, and that a
new standard of humane sympathy and moral obligation had arisen in other
nations. Her cruelty towards the insurgent Cubans became so intolerable
that the great neighboring republic of the United States bade her, in
tones of no uncertain meaning, to bring it to an end. In response Spain
adopted her favorite method of procrastination, and the frightful reign of
starvation in Cuba was maintained. This was more than the American people
could endure, and war was declared. With the cause and the general course
of that war our readers are familiar, but it embraced two events of signal
significance--the naval contests of the war--which are worth telling again
as the most striking occurrences in the recent history of Spain.

At early dawn of the 1st of May, 1898, a squadron of United States
cruisers appeared before the city of Manila, in the island of Luzon, the
largest island of the Philippine archipelago, then a colony of Spain. This
squadron, consisting of the cruisers Olympia, Baltimore, Raleigh, and
Boston, the gunboats Petrel and Concord, and the despatch-boat McCulloch,
had entered the bay of Manila during the night, passing unhurt the
batteries at its mouth, and at daybreak swept in proud array past the city
front, seeking the Spanish fleet, which lay in the little bay of Cavite,
opening into the larger bay.

[Illustration: THE CITY OF SARAGOSSA.]

THE ANNIHILATION OF THE SPANISH FLEET IN THE HARBOR OF MANILA.

Copyright, 1898, by Arkell Publishing Company

The Spanish ships consisted of five cruisers and three gunboats, inferior
in weight and armament to their enemy, but flanked by shore batteries on
each end of the line, and with an exact knowledge of the ha