e had eight or nine miles to walk before dark, we
refreshed ourselves with a hasty lunch of hard bread and water, took a
number of letters from officers of the Rough Riders to post at the first
opportunity, and started back for the ship.

The Siboney-Santiago road, at that time and for several days thereafter,
was comparatively dry and in fairly good condition. It had to be widened
a little in some places, and a company or two of soldiers from the Tenth
Cavalry were working on it just beyond the Rough Riders' camp; but, as
far as we went, loaded army wagons could get over it without the least
difficulty. Supplies at the front, nevertheless, were very short.
Lieutenant-Colonel Roosevelt told me that his command had only enough
hard bread and bacon for that night's supper, and that if more did not
come before dark there would be no breakfast for them in the morning. I
cannot now remember whether we met a supply-train on our way back to
Siboney, or not; but I think not.

At the intersection of the road with the mesa trail, we stopped for a
few moments to look over the battle-field of Guasimas. Evidences and
traces of the fight, in the shape of cartridge-shells and clips,
bullet-splintered trees, improvised stretchers, and blood-soaked clothes
and bandages, were to be seen almost everywhere, and particularly on the
trail along which the Rough Riders had advanced. At one spot, in a
little hollow or depression of the trail, from which one could see out
into an open field about one hundred yards distant, the ground was
completely covered with cartridge-shells and-clips from both Mauser and
Krag-Jorgensen rifles. A squad of Spaniards had apparently used the
hollow as a place of shelter first, and had fired two or three hundred
shots from it, strewing the ground with the clips and brass shells of
their Mauser cartridges. Then the Rough Riders had evidently driven them
out and occupied the hollow themselves, firing two or three hundred more
shots, and covering the yellow cartridge-shells of the Mauser rifles
with a silvery layer of empty tubes from the Krag-Jorgensens. It looked
as if one might pick up a bushel or two of these shells in an area ten
or fifteen feet square.

A short distance from the intersection of the trail with the road was a
large grave-shaped mound of fresh earth, under which had been buried
together eight of the men killed on our side during the fight. There had
been no time, apparently, to prepare and put