of any kind until we approached the battle-field of Guasimas, where
scores of vultures were soaring and circling above the tree-tops, as if
aware of the fact that in the leafy depths of the jungle below were
still lying the unburied and undiscovered bodies of Spanish dead.

Nothing surprised me more, as I walked from Siboney to the front, than
the feebleness of the resistance offered by the Spaniards to our
advance. The road, after it enters the hills, abounds in strong
defensive positions, and if General Chaffee or General Wood, with five
thousand American regulars, had held it, as General Linares attempted to
hold it at Guasimas, a Spanish army would not have fought its way
through to Santiago in a month. There are at least half a dozen places,
between the Siboney valley and the crest of the divide beyond Sevilla,
where a few simple intrenchments in the shape of rifle-pits and
barricades would have enabled even a small force, fighting as General
Vara del Rey's command afterward fought at Caney, to detain our army for
days, if not to check its advance altogether. The almost impenetrable
nature of the undergrowth on either side would have made flanking
movements extremely difficult, and a direct attack along the narrow
road, in the face of such a fire as might have been delivered from
intrenched positions in front and at the sides, would almost certainly
have been disastrous to the advancing column. Even if the Spaniards had
been driven from their first line of defense, they could have fallen
back a mile or two to a second position, equally strong, and then to a
third, and by thus fighting, falling back, and then fighting again, they
might have inflicted great loss upon the attacking force long before it
got within sight of Santiago.

I can think of only two reasons for their failure to adopt this method
of defense. The first is that they did not know certainly whether
General Shafter would make his main attack by way of Guasimas and
Sevilla, or along the sea-coast by way of Aguadores; and they feared
that if they sent the greater part of their small army to check an
advance by the former route, the city, which would be left almost
undefended, might be attacked suddenly by a column moving rapidly along
the sea-coast and up the Aguadores ravine, or, possibly, by a force
which should land at Cabanas and march around the bay. This reason,
however, seems to me to have little force, because from the
signal-station at Morro