Oregon_ communicated with Washington off Jupiter Inlet, on the
east coast of Florida. Her engines being reported perfectly ready,
after her long cruise, she was directed to go to Key West, where she
coaled, and on the 28th left for the Havana blockade. It is difficult
to exaggerate the honor which this result does to Chief Engineer
Milligan and to the officers responsible under him for the condition
of her machinery. The combination of skill and care thus evidenced is
of the highest order.

Such, in general outline, omitting details superfluous to correct
comprehension, was the course of incidents on our side, in the Cuban
campaign, during the ten days, May 12th-21st; from the bombardment of
San Juan de Puerto Rico to the establishment of the two armored
divisions in the positions which, under better conditions of national
preparation, they should have occupied by the 1st of the month. All is
well that ends well--so far at least as the wholly past is concerned;
but for the instruction of the future it is necessary not to cast the
past entirely behind our backs before its teachings have been pondered
and assimilated. We cannot expect ever again to have an enemy so
entirely inapt as Spain showed herself to be; yet, even so, Cervera's
division reached Santiago on the 19th of May, two days before our
divisions appeared in the full force they could muster before Havana
and Cienfuegos. Had the Spanish Admiral been trying for one of those
ports, even at the low rate of speed observed in going from Curacao
to Santiago--about seven and five-tenth knots--he could have left
Curacao on the evening of May 15th, and have reached Cienfuegos on the
21st, between midnight and daybreak, enabling him to enter the harbor
by 8 A.M.--more than twelve hours before the arrival there of our
Flying Squadron.

The writer assumes that, had our coast defences been such as to put
our minds at ease concerning the safety of our chief seaboard cities,
the Flying Squadron would from the first have been off Cienfuegos. He
is forced to assume so, because his own military conviction has always
been that such would have been the proper course. Whatever _coup de
main_ might have been possible against a harbor inadequately defended
as were some of ours,--the fears of which, even, he considered
exaggerated,--no serious operations against a defended seaboard were
possible to any enemy after a transatlantic voyage, until recoaled. It
would have been safe, mili