s the belly of this army was three miles long, it
could advance but slowly.

This week of rest, after the cramped life of the troop-ship, was not
ungrateful, although the rations were scarce and there was no tobacco,
which was as necessary to the health of the men as their food.

During this week of waiting, the chief excitement was to walk out a mile
and a half beyond the outposts to the hill of El Poso, and look across
the basin that lay in the great valley which leads to Santiago. The left
of the valley was the hills which hide the sea. The right of the valley
was the hills in which nestle the village of El Caney. Below El Poso, in
the basin, the dense green forest stretched a mile and a half to the
hills of San Juan. These hills looked so quiet and sunny and well kept
that they reminded one of a New England orchard. There was a blue
bungalow on a hill to the right, a red bungalow higher up on the right,
and in the centre the block-house of San Juan, which looked like a
Chinese pagoda. Three-quarters of a mile behind them, with a dip
between, were the long white walls of the hospital and barracks of
Santiago, wearing thirteen Red Cross flags, and, as was pointed out to
the foreign attaches later, two six-inch guns a hundred yards in advance
of the Red Cross flags.

It was so quiet, so fair, and so prosperous looking that it breathed of
peace. It seemed as though one might, without accident, walk in and take
dinner at the Venus Restaurant, or loll on the benches in the Plaza, or
rock in one of the great bent-wood chairs around the patio of the Don
Carlos Club.

But, on the 27th of June, a long, yellow pit opened in the hill-side of
San Juan, and in it we could see straw sombreros rising and bobbing up
and down, and under the shade of the block-house, blue-coated Spaniards
strolling leisurely about or riding forth on little white ponies to
scamper over the hills. Officers of every regiment, _attaches_ of
foreign countries, correspondents, and staff officers daily reported the
fact that the rifle-pits were growing in length and in number, and that
in plain sight from the hill of El Poso the enemy was intrenching himself
at San Juan, and at the little village of El Caney to the right, where he
was marching through the streets. But no artillery was sent to El Poso
hill to drop a shell among the busy men at work among the trenches, or to
interrupt the street parades in El Caney. For four days before the
Ameri