, and, meanwhile, we might, perhaps, render
some service to the wounded soldiers of General Wheeler's command whom
Mr. Howard had seen lying, without blankets or pillows, on the floor. We
had on board the _State of Texas_, at that time, one hundred or more
cots, with plenty of bedding, and if the medical officers of the army
could not get hospital supplies ashore, we thought that we could. At any
rate, we would try. Calling again upon Captain McCalla, I explained to
him the reasons for our sudden change of plan, and told him that,
although we had decided to go to Siboney, we should try to get back in
time to meet the pack-train and escort to be furnished by General Perez.
I then returned to the _State of Texas_, and we sailed for Siboney at
two o'clock.

In order to follow intelligently the course of the Santiago campaign,
and to understand and appreciate the difficulties with which the medical
department of the army had to contend, one must know something of the
coast upon which that army landed and the nature of the environment by
which it was surrounded. The southeastern coast of Cuba, between the
entrance to Santiago harbor and the Bay of Guantanamo, is formed by
three parallel ranges of hills and mountains which may be roughly
characterized as follows: first, what I shall call the rampart--a high,
flat-topped ridge, or narrow table, very steep on the sea side, and
broken into long terraces by outcropping ledges of limestone; second,
the foot-hills, which rise out of a wooded valley or valleys behind the
rampart; and, third, the high mountains of the coast, or Sierra del
Cobre, range, which lie back of the foot-hills, at a distance of five or
six miles from the sea. This is not a strictly accurate topographical
description of the coast, but it is roughly and generally true and will
answer my purpose. In the vicinity of Santiago the rampart, or
mesa-like elevation which borders the sea, has a height of two or three
hundred feet, and stretches eastward and westward, like a stone wall,
for a distance of nearly twenty miles. At three points it is cut down to
the sea-level in narrow, V-shaped clefts, or notches, which have a width
at the bottom of from seventy-five to two hundred yards, and which serve
as outlets for three small streams. The first of these notches, as one
goes eastward from Morro Castle, is that formed by the mouth of the
Aguadores ravine, where the Juragua Railroad, on its way from Siboney to
Santiago,