artillery except one small
field-piece, which they fired only four or five times, and that not more
than fifteen or twenty of them could be seen, at any time, in or about
the rifle-pits. General Duffield, on the other hand, reports that they
numbered five hundred, and that their artillery shelled the railroad
track and the woods where his troops were until 3 P.M.--about five
hours. That their fire was not very destructive sufficiently appears
from the fact that, in half a day of more or less continuous
skirmishing, General Duffield lost only two men killed and six wounded.

Between three and four o'clock in the afternoon the Michigan troops
returned by rail to Siboney; the war-ships withdrew to their blockading
stations; and the field, as well as the honors, remained in possession
of the Spaniards. After the engagement the _State of Texas_ ran close in
to the shore, and we saw perhaps a dozen Spanish soldiers standing or
walking on the hillside west of the ravine. There may have been more of
them in the concealment of the woods; but my impression is that their
force was very small, and that General Duffield, with the aid and
support of the war-ships, should have been able to clear the ravine and
take possession not only of the abandoned fort but of the commanding
heights above it.

When we got back to Siboney, late in the afternoon, the village was full
of rumors of heavy fighting in front of Santiago; and, an hour or two
after dark, wounded men, some on foot and some in army wagons, began to
arrive at the Siboney hospital from the distant field of battle. As they
had all been disabled and sent to the rear in the early part of the day,
they could give us no information with regard to the result of the
engagement. Many of them had been wounded before they had seen a Spanish
intrenchment, or even a Spanish soldier; and all they knew about the
fight was that the army had moved forward at daybreak and they
themselves had been shot in the woods by an enemy whom they could
neither locate nor see.

The Siboney hospital, thanks to the devotion and unwearied energy of
Major Lagarde and his assistants, was by this time in fairly good
working order. There was a lack of blankets, pillows, and tentage, and
the operating facilities, perhaps, were not as ample as they might have
been; but in view of the extraordinary difficulties with which the
surgeons had had to contend, the results were highly creditable to them,
even if not who