. Both he
and General Wheeler, however, were suffering from the climate and were
unable to be with the troops. The problem of making a concerted advance
through the thick underbrush was a difficult one, and the disposition of
the American troops was at once revealed by a battery of artillery which
used black powder, and by a captive balloon which was injudiciously
towed about.

The right wing here, after assuming an exposed position, was unable to
act, as Lawton, by whom it was expecting to be reinforced, was delayed
at El Caney. The advance regiments were under the fire of the artillery,
the infantry, and the skillful sharpshooters of an invisible enemy and
were also exposed to the fierce heat of the sun, to which they were
unaccustomed. The wounded were carried back on litters, turned over to
the surgeons, who worked manfully with the scantiest of equipment, and
were then laid, often naked except for their bandages, upon the damp
ground. Regiment blocked regiment in the narrow road, and officers
carrying orders were again and again struck, as they emerged from cover,
by the sharpshooters' fire. The want of means of communication paralyzed
the command, for all the equipment of a modern army was lacking: there
were no aeroplanes, no wireless stations, no telephones.

Throughout the morning the situation grew worse, but the nerve of the
men did not give way, and American individual initiative rose to the
boiling point. Realizing that safety lay only in advance, the officers
on the spot began to take control. General Hawkins, with the Sixth and
Sixteenth Regulars, advanced against the main blockhouse, which crested
a slope of two hundred feet, and the men of the Seventy-first New York
Volunteers joined promiscuously in the charge.

To the right rose Kettle Hill, jutting out and Banking the approach to
the main position. Facing it and dismounted were the First and Ninth
Regular Cavalry, the latter a negro regiment, and the Rough Riders under
Colonel Roosevelt. The Tenth Infantry was between the two wings, and
divided in the support of both. A battery of Gatling guns was placed in
position. The Americans steadily advanced in an irregular line, though
kept in some sort of formation by their officers. Breaking down brush
and barbed wire and sheltering themselves in the high grass, the men on
the right wing worked their way up Kettle Hill, but before they reached
the rifle pits of the enemy, they saw the Spaniards retreating