e unloading and landing of them at Daiquiri and Siboney, there would
have been a properly equipped hospital at the latter place five days
sooner than there was; there would have been forty or fifty more mules
in the army's pack-train; the beach would not have been strewn with the
wrecks of mismanaged boats and lighters; and the transport-steamers
_Alamo_, _Breakwater_, _Iroquois_, _Vigilancia_, and _La Grande
Duchesse_ would not have brought back to the United States hundreds of
tons of supplies intended for, and urgently needed by, our soldiers at
the front.

On the afternoon of Tuesday, June 28, one of the small vessels of the
mosquito fleet arrived from Guantanamo Bay with a letter from Captain
McCalla in which he said that General Perez had furnished a pack-train
and an escort for the food that the Red Cross had promised to send to
the Guantanamo refugees, and that he would like to have us return there
as soon as possible and land five thousand rations. As our hospital work
on shore was well under way, and Dr. Lesser and the nurses had been
supplied with everything that they would need for a day or two, Miss
Barton decided to fill Captain McCalla's requisition at once. Late
Tuesday evening, therefore, the _State of Texas_ left Siboney, and after
a quiet and peaceful run down the coast entered Guantanamo Bay about six
o'clock Wednesday morning. At half-past six Captain McCalla came on
board to make arrangements for the landing, and in less than two hours
there was a large lighter alongside, with a steam-launch to tow it to
the place where an officer of General Perez's command was waiting for it
with a pack-train and an escort. Before noon ten or fifteen thousand
pounds of supplies, consisting principally of beans, rice, hard bread,
and South American jerked beef, had been safely landed on the western
side of the entrance to the lower harbor; and as we passed the point, on
our return, we saw a large party of Cubans carrying the boxes and
barrels up the bank.

We reached Siboney early that evening, drifted and rolled all night on a
heavy swell, a mile or two off the coast, and at daybreak on the
following morning ran close in to the beach and began landing supplies
for several thousand destitute Cuban refugees who had assembled at the
little village of Firmeza, three miles back of Siboney in the hills. In
getting provisions ashore at Siboney, we encountered precisely the same
difficulties that the army had to meet; bu