eneral Young, with a part of the Tenth Cavalry (colored) supported by
four troops of the First, was engaged in storming the hill up which ran
the valley road; and at the end of an hour and a half, after a stubborn
defense, the Spaniards were forced to abandon their chosen position and
retreat in the direction of Santiago, leaving the junction of the two
roads in our possession. The battle of Guasimas--the first fight of the
Santiago campaign--had been won.

The number of men engaged in this affair, on our side, was nine hundred
and sixty-four, and our loss in killed and wounded was sixty-six,
including Captain Capron and Hamilton Fish, both of whom died on the
field. The Spaniards, according to the statement of Mr. Ramsden, British
consul in Santiago, had a force of nearly three thousand men and
reported a loss of seven killed and fourteen wounded. It seems probable,
however, that their loss was much greater than this. General Linares
would hardly have abandoned a strong position and fallen back on the
city after a loss of only twenty-one men out of three thousand.

Two war correspondents, Mr. Richard Harding Davis and Mr. Edward
Marshall, took an active part in this engagement, and the latter was so
severely wounded by a Mauser bullet, which passed through his body near
the spine, that when he was carried from the field he was supposed to be
dying. He rallied, however, after being taken to Siboney, and has since
partially recovered.

The effect of General Wheeler's victory at Guasimas was to open up the
Santiago road to a point within three or four miles of the city; and
when we returned in the _State of Texas_ from Guantanamo, the Rough
Riders were in camp beyond Sevilla, and a dozen other regiments were
hurrying to the front.

We reached Siboney after dark on Sunday evening, and found the little
cove and the neighboring roadstead filled with transport steamers, whose
twinkling anchor-lights--or rather adrift lights, for there was no
anchorage--swung slowly back and forth in long curves as the vessels
rolled and wallowed in the trough of the sea. As soon as a boat could be
lowered, the medical officers of Miss Barton's staff went on shore to
investigate the state of affairs and to ascertain whether the Red Cross
could render any assistance to the hospital corps of the army. They
returned in the course of an hour and reported that in two of the
abandoned Spanish houses on the beach they had found two hastily
extemp