the hill eaten up
by our trenches, hidden by a vast laundry of shelter tents, and torn
apart by bomb-proofs, their jutting roofs of logs and broken branches
weighed down by earth and stones and looking like the pit mouths to many
mines. That probably is how most of the American army last saw San Juan
Hill, and that probably is how it best remembers it--as a fortified camp.
That was twelve years ago. When I revisited it, San Juan Hill was again
a sunny, smiling farm land, the trenches planted with vegetables, the
roofs of the bomb-proofs fallen in and buried beneath creeping vines, and
the barbed-wire entanglements holding in check only the browsing cattle.

San Juan Hill is not a solitary hill, but the most prominent of a ridge
of hills, with Kettle Hill a quarter of a mile away on the edge of the
jungle and separated from the ridge by a tiny lake. In the local
nomenclature Kettle Hill, which is the name given to it by the Rough
Riders, has always been known as San Juan Hill, with an added name to
distinguish it from the other San Juan Hill of greater renown.

The days we spent on those hills were so rich in incident and interest
and were filled with moments of such excitement, of such pride in one's
fellow-countrymen, of pity for the hurt and dying, of laughter and
good-fellowship, that one supposed he might return after even twenty
years and recognize every detail of the ground. But a shorter time has
made startling and confusing changes. Now a visitor will find that not
until after several different visits, and by walking and riding foot by
foot over the hills, can he make them fall into line as he thinks he once
knew them. Immediately around San Juan Hill itself there has been some
attempt made to preserve the ground as a public park. A barbed-wire
fence, with a gateway, encircles the block-house, which has been
converted into a home for the caretaker of the park, and then, skirting
the road to Santiago to include the tree under which the surrender was
arranged, stretches to the left of the block-house to protect a monument.
This monument was erected by Americans to commemorate the battle. It is
now rapidly falling to pieces, but there still is enough of it intact to
show the pencilled scribblings and autographs of tourists who did not
take part in the battle, but who in this public manner show that they
approve of its results. The public park is less than a quarter of a mile
square. Except for it no other