the conditions.
It was not till the 28th of the month that the junction of the
_Oregon_ put our division before Havana on terms approaching equality
as regards quickness of movement.

On the 19th of May the Department received probable, but not certain,
information that the enemy's division had entered Santiago. This, as
is now known, had occurred on the early morning of the same day.
Singularly enough, less than twenty-four hours before, on the 18th,
the auxiliary steamer _St. Louis_, Captain Goodrich, lately one of the
American Transatlantic liners, had been close in with the mouth of
this port, which had hitherto lain outside our sphere of operations,
and had made a determined and successful attempt to cut the telegraph
cable leading from Santiago to Jamaica. In doing this, the _St.
Louis_, which, like her sister ships (except the _St. Paul_), had not
yet received an armament suitable to her size or duties, lay for
three-quarters of an hour under the fire of the enemy, at a distance
of little over a mile. Fortunately a six-inch rifled gun on the Socapa
battery, which was then being mounted, was not ready until the
following day; and the _St. Louis_ held her ground without injury
until a piece had been cut out of the cable. In this work she was
assisted by the tug _Wompatuck_, Lieutenant-Commander Jungen. The two
vessels then moved away to Guantanamo Bay, having been off Santiago
nearly forty-eight hours. It may certainly be charged as good luck to
Cervera that their departure before his arrival kept our Government
long in uncertainty as to the fact, which we needed to know in the
most positive manner before stripping the Havana blockade in order to
concentrate at Santiago. The writer remembers that the captain of the
_St. Louis_, having soon afterwards to come north for coal, found it
difficult to believe that he could have missed the Spanish vessels by
so little; and the more so because he had spent the 19th off
Guantanamo, less than fifty miles distant. By that time, however, our
information, though still less than eye-witness, was so far probable
as to preponderate over his doubts; but much perplexity would have
been spared us had the enemy been seen by this ship, whose great speed
would have brought immediate positive intelligence that all, and not
only a part, had entered the port. On this point we did not obtain
certainty until three weeks later.

In yet another respect luck, as it is commonly called, went ag