st of Cuba by the
prevailing easterly winds makes it often dangerous and always difficult
to lay a collier alongside a battle-ship in the open sea and transfer
coal from one to the other. Understanding and appreciating this
difficulty, Secretary Long telegraphed Admiral Sampson on May 28 to
consider the question whether it would not be possible to "seize
Guantanamo and occupy it as a coaling-station." Sampson replied that he
thought it might be done, and immediately cabled Commodore Schley off
Santiago as follows: "Send a ship to examine Guantanamo with a view to
occupying it as a base, coaling one heavy ship at a time." The official
correspondence thus far published does not show whether Commodore Schley
received this order in time to act upon it before Sampson arrived or
not; but as soon as the latter came he caused a reconnaissance of
Guantanamo Bay to be made, decided that the lower part of it might be
seized by a comparatively small land force if protected by the guns of a
few war-ships, and immediately sent to Key West for the first battalion
of marines, which was the only available landing force at his command.
Meanwhile the auxiliary cruiser _Yankee_ bombarded and burned a Spanish
blockhouse situated on a hill near the entrance to the lower harbor of
Guantanamo, and on June 8 Captain McCalla, in the _Marblehead_, seized
and occupied--as far as he could do so without a landing force--all that
part of the bay which lies between the entrance and the narrow strait
leading to the fortified post of Caimanera.

The marines, under command of Lieutenant-Colonel Huntington, arrived on
the steamer _Panther_, Friday, June 10, and proceeded at once to
disembark. The place selected for a landing was a low, rounded,
bush-covered hill on the right, or eastern, side of the bay, about a
quarter of a mile from the entrance. On the summit of this hill the
Spaniards had made a little clearing in the chaparral and erected a
small square blockhouse; but inasmuch as this blockhouse had already
been destroyed and its garrison driven to the woods by the fire of the
_Yankee_, all that the marines had to do was to occupy the abandoned
position and again fortify the hill. In some respects this hill, which
was about one hundred and fifty feet in height, made a strong and easily
defended position; but, unfortunately, it was covered nearly to the
summit with a dense growth of bushes and scrub, and was commanded by a
range of higher hills a lit