El
Caney, and when El Caney was eliminated, his division was to continue
forward and join hands on the right with the divisions of General Sumner
and General Kent. The army was then to rest for that night in the woods,
half a mile from San Juan.

On the following morning it was to attack San Juan on the two flanks,
under cover of artillery. The objection to this plan, which did not
apparently suggest itself to General Shafter, was that an army of twelve
thousand men, sleeping within five hundred yards of the enemy's
rifle-pits, might not unreasonably be expected to pass a bad night. As
we discovered the next day, not only the five hundred yards, but the
whole basin was covered by the fire from the rifle-pits. Even by
daylight, when it was possible to seek some slight shelter, the army
could not remain in the woods, but according to the plan it was expected
to bivouac for the night in those woods, and in the morning to manoeuvre
and deploy and march through them to the two flanks of San Juan. How the
enemy was to be hypnotized while this was going forward it is difficult
to understand.

According to this programme, Capron's battery opened on El Caney and
Grimes's battery opened on the pagoda-like block-house of San Juan. The
range from El Poso was exactly 2,400 yards, and the firing, as was
discovered later, was not very effective. The battery used black powder,
and, as a result, after each explosion the curtain of smoke hung over the
gun for fully a minute before the gunners could see the San Juan
trenches, which was chiefly important because for a full minute it gave a
mark to the enemy. The hill on which the battery stood was like a
sugar-loaf. Behind it was the farm-house of El Poso, the only building
in sight within a radius of a mile, and in it were Cuban soldiers and
other non-combatants. The Rough Riders had been ordered to halt in the
yard of the farm-house and the artillery horses were drawn up in it,
under the lee of the hill. The First and Tenth dismounted Cavalry were
encamped a hundred yards from the battery along the ridge. They might as
sensibly have been ordered to paint the rings in a target while a company
was firing at the bull's-eye. To our first twenty shots the enemy made
no reply; when they did it was impossible, owing to their using smokeless
powder, to locate their guns. Their third shell fell in among the Cubans
in the block-house and among the Rough Riders and the men of the Fi