, and the positions and
trenches taken and held by the different regiments under them one can
place only relatively. One reason for this is that before our army
attacked the hills all the underbrush and small trees that might conceal
the advance of our men had been cleared away by the Spaniards, leaving
the hill, except for the high crest, comparatively bare. To-day the
hills are thick with young trees and enormous bushes. The alteration in
the landscape is as marked as is the difference between ground cleared
for golf and the same spot planted with corn and fruit-trees.

Of all the camps, the one that to-day bears the strongest evidences of
its occupation is that of the Rough Riders. A part of the camp of that
regiment, which was situated on the ridge some hundred feet from the
Santiago road, was pitched under a clump of shade trees, and to-day, even
after seven years, the trunks of these trees bear the names and initials
of the men who camped beneath them. {4} These men will remember that
when they took this hill they found that the fortifications beneath the
trees were partly made from the foundations of an adobe house. The red
tiles from its roof still litter the ground. These tiles and the names
cut in the bark of the trees determine absolutely the site of one-half of
the camp, but the other half, where stood Tiffany's quick-firing gun and
Parker's Gatling, has been almost obliterated. The tree under which
Colonel pitched his tent I could not discover, and the trenches in which
he used to sit with his officers and with the officers from the regiments
of the regular army are now levelled to make a kitchen-garden. Sometimes
the ex-President is said to have too generously given office and
promotion to the friends he made in Cuba. These men he met in the
trenches were then not necessarily his friends. To-day they are not
necessarily his friends. They are the men the free life of the
rifle-pits enabled him to know and to understand as the settled relations
of home life and peace would never have permitted. At that time none of
them guessed that the "amateur colonel," to whom they talked freely as to
a comrade, would be their Commander-in-Chief. They did not suspect that
he would become even the next Governor of New York, certainly not that in
a few years he would be the President of the United States. So they
showed themselves to him frankly, unconsciously. They criticised,
argued, disagreed, and he becam