better than the army of invasion could. Besides
that, a column of five thousand regulars from Manzanillo was hurrying to
his assistance, and it was of the utmost importance that these
reinforcements should reach him before he should be forced into a
decisive battle. Instead of resisting General Shafter's advance,
however, with obstinate pertinacity on the Siboney road, he abandoned
his strong position at Guasimas, after a single sharp but inconclusive
engagement, and retreated almost to Santiago without striking another
blow. As I have already said with regard to the unopposed landing at
Daiquiri and Siboney, it was great luck for General Shafter, but it was
not war.

We passed the battle-field of Guasimas about noon, without stopping to
examine it, and pushed on toward Sevilla with a straggling, disorderly
column of soldiers belonging to the Second and Twenty-first Infantry,
who were following a battery of light artillery to the front. The men
seemed to be suffering intensely from the heat, and every few hundred
yards we would find one of them lying unconscious in the bushes by the
roadside, where he had been carried by his comrades after he had fainted
and fallen under the fierce, scorching rays of the tropical sun. In one
place, where the road was narrow and sunken, we met a pack-train of
mules returning from the front. Frightened at something, just before
they reached the artillery, they suddenly broke into a wild stampede,
and as they could not escape on either side, owing to the height of the
banks and the denseness of the undergrowth, they jumped in among the
guns and caissons and floundered about until the whole battery was
involved in an almost inextricable tangle, which blocked the road for
more than an hour. I tried to get around the jam of mules, horses, and
cannon by climbing the bank and forcing my way through the jungle; but I
was so torn by thorns and pricked by the sharp spines of the Spanish
bayonet that I soon gave up the attempt, and, returning to the road, sat
down, in the shadiest place I could find, to rest, take a drink from my
canteen, and await developments. If General Linares, when he retreated,
had left behind a squad or two of sharp-shooters and bushwhackers to
harass our advance at narrow and difficult places in the road, what a
chance they would have had when the pack-mules jumped into that battery!
With the help given by a detachment of engineers, who were working on
the road a short dis