ed so miserably by sickness afterward, that very
few ever returned to their native land again."

This is all that Colonel Putnam's contemporary, Humphreys, has to say of
the most eventful episode of his hero's career, but it seems to the
present writer (who has personally investigated the British and Colonial
invasion of Cuba "on the spot") that the subject is worthy of more
extended notice. The English expedition against Havana was occasioned by
the King of Spain, Charles III, having entered into what was known as
the "family compact" with Louis XV of France, by which the Bourbons were
to support each other against British rapacity and aggrandizement, as
they styled it.

England had long looked covetously upon Havana, which the Spaniards
themselves called the "Key of the New World," situated at the mouth of
the Gulf of Mexico and (in the hands of a strong power) then controlling
the seaboard of territory at present comprised in the South Atlantic
States of our Union. So she hastened to seize the capital of Cuba, the
"Pearl of the Antilles," and early in June, 1762, the surprised and
frightened inhabitants were informed that a fleet of sixty ships-of-war
had landed more than 20,000 men at the little port of Cogimar, a few
miles to the east of picturesque and formidable Morro Castle.

Quickly, then, the Captain-General assembled the "Junta of Defense,"
composed of men most eminent in military affairs in Havana, and placed
before them the situation.[1] They resolved upon a spirited defense,
even though their soldiers were insufficiently armed and they had no
defensive works save the Morro, then about a hundred years old, and its
companion fortress called the Punta, between which two forts lay the
deep and narrow entrance to the harbor. This harbor was blocked by some
big war-ships, and a chain was stretched across the mouth, but the
English did not even essay an entrance, having landed their troops to
the east, and first marching upon the Morro from Cogimar and the town of
Guanabacao, which they took quite easily, and then sweeping over the
Cabanas hills, where the Spaniards later built the vast fortifications
which they should have constructed sooner for the defense of their
capital city.

[Footnote 1: From _Nociones de Historia de Cuba_, by Dr. Vidal Morales;
Havana, 1904.]

The Provincials arrived the last of July, and landed to the west of
Havana, where stands a small fort known as the Torreon of Chorrera,
which