ban pilot, we steamed slowly in under the gray, frowning
battlements of Morro Castle. As we approached it I had an opportunity to
see, for the first time, the nature and extent of the damage done to it
by the guns of Admiral Sampson's fleet, and I was glad to find that,
although it had been somewhat battered on its southern or sea face, its
architectural picturesqueness had not been destroyed or even seriously
impaired. To an observer looking at it from the south, it has, in
general outline, the appearance of three huge cubes or rectangular
masses of gray masonry, put together in such a way that the largest
cube occupies the crest of the bold, almost precipitous bluff which
forms the eastern side of the entrance to the harbor, while the other
two descend from it in colossal steps of diminishing size toward an
escarpment in the hillside seventy-five or a hundred feet below, where
appear five or six square, grated doors, leading, apparently, to a row
of subterranean ammunition-vaults. Underneath the escarpment is a zigzag
flight of steps, screened at exposed points by what seem to be
comparatively recent walls, or curtains of masonry, much lighter in
color than the walls of the castle itself. Still lower down, at the base
of the bluff, are two or three huge, dark caves into which the swell of
the Caribbean Sea rolls with a dull, reverberating roar. The height of
the castle above the water appears to be one hundred and fifty or two
hundred feet. There are very few embrasures, or port-holes, in the gray,
lichen-stained walls of the old fortification, and, so far as I could
see, it had no armament whatever except two or three guns mounted en
barbette on the parapet of the uppermost cube, or bastion.

As a defensive work the Morro Castle of Santiago has no importance or
significance whatever, and its complete destruction would not have made
it any easier for Admiral Sampson to force an entrance to the harbor. It
is the oldest Morro, however, in Cuba; and as a relic of the past, and
an interesting and attractive feature in a landscape already
picturesque, it has the highest possible value, and I am more than glad
that it was not destroyed. There was no reason, really, for bombarding
it at all, because it was perfectly harmless. The defenses of Santiago
that were really dangerous and effective were the submarine mines in the
channel and the earthwork batteries east and west of the entrance to the
harbor. Morro was huge, formidab