iant peace. Roosevelt had never been in the tropics and Captain
McCormick and I were talking back at him over our shoulders and at each
other, pointing out unfamiliar trees and birds. Roosevelt thought it
looked like a good deer country, as it once was; it reminded McCormick of
Southern California; it looked to me like the trails in Central America.
We advanced, talking in that fashion and in high spirits, and
congratulating ourselves in being shut of the transport and on breathing
fine mountain air again, and on the fact that we were on horseback. We
agreed it was impossible to appreciate that we were really at war--that
we were in the enemy's country. We had been riding in this pleasant
fashion for an hour and a half with brief halts for rest, when Wood
stopped the head of the column, and rode down the trail to meet Capron,
who was coming back. Wood returned immediately, leading his horse, and
said to Roosevelt:

"Pass the word back to keep silence in the ranks."

The place at which we had halted was where the trail narrowed, and
proceeded sharply downward. There was on one side of it a stout
barbed-wire fence of five strands. By some fortunate accident this fence
had been cut just where the head of the column halted. On the left of
the trail it shut off fields of high grass blocked at every fifty yards
with great barricades of undergrowth and tangled trees and chapparal. On
the other side of the trail there was not a foot of free ground; the
bushes seemed absolutely impenetrable, as indeed they were later found to
be.

When we halted, the men sat down beside the trail and chewed the long
blades of grass, or fanned the air with their hats. They had no
knowledge of the situation such as their leaders possessed, and their
only emotion was one of satisfaction at the chance the halt gave them to
rest and to shift their packs. Wood again walked down the trail with
Capron and disappeared, and one of the officers informed us that the
scouts had seen the outposts of the enemy. It did not seem reasonable
that the Spaniards, who had failed to attack us when we landed at
Baiquiri, would oppose us until they could do so in force, so,
personally, I doubted that there were any Spaniards nearer than Santiago.
But we tied our horses to the wire fence, and Capron's troop knelt with
carbines at the "Ready," peering into the bushes. We must have waited
there, while Wood reconnoitred, for over ten minutes. Then he returne