of light guns, it would have been
extremely difficult, if not absolutely impossible, to get the troops
ashore. Even without artillery, ten or fifteen hundred men armed with
Mausers on the heights which command the notches and the approaches to
them might have held off a landing force for days, if not weeks. The
war-ships might have shelled them, or swept the heights with
machine-guns, but it would have been easy for them to find shelter under
the crest of the rampart on the land side, and I doubt whether a force
so sheltered could have been dislodged or silenced by Admiral Sampson's
whole fleet. In order to drive them out it would have been necessary to
land in the surf under fire, and storm the heights by scaling the
precipitous terraced front of the rampart on the sea side. This might,
perhaps, have been done, but it would have involved a great sacrifice of
life. The Spanish officers in Cuba, however, were not skilful
tacticians. Instead of anticipating General Shafter's movements and
occupying, with an adequate force, the only two places in the vicinity
of Santiago where he could possibly land, they overlooked or neglected
the splendid defensive positions that nature herself had provided for
them, and allowed the army of invasion to come ashore without firing a
shot. It was great luck for us, but it was not war.

Before night on the 22d, General Lawton's division, consisting of about
six thousand men with a Gatling-gun battery, had landed at Daiquiri, and
on the morning of the 23d it marched westward along the wagon-road to
Siboney. The Spanish garrison at the latter place retreated in the
direction of Santiago as General Lawton appeared, and the village fell
into our hands without a struggle. Disembarkation continued throughout
the 23d and 24th, at both Daiquiri and Siboney, and before dark on the
afternoon of the 24th nine tenths of the army of invasion had landed,
with no other accident than the loss of two men drowned.

In the meantime, General Linares, the Spanish commander at Santiago, had
marched out of the city, with a force of about three thousand men, to
meet the invaders, and had occupied a strong defensive position on the
crest of a wooded hill at Guasimas, three or four miles northwest of
Siboney, where the two roads from the latter place--one up the valley of
the stream and the other over the end of the mesa--come together. He did
not know certainly which of these two roads the invading force would
ta