Edgefield advertiser. [volume] (Edgefield, S.C.) 1836-current, 1898-03-09
MYSTERIOUS WARNING.
Then He Was Thought to be
Crazy, Now He is Being
Hunted High and
Low by Amer
leans.

That was the solemn, earnesI
warning of an elderly Spaniard
who called at the American
consulate general every day day
for a week before the disaster.
He had been in the habit of
visiting the consulate twice a
week for some time, but after
the Maine arrived his visits became
more frequent. The week before
the explosion he went daily, fairly
begging that the American
battleship be sent away.
The consulate officials thought
he was crazy then; now they are
hunting for him, as he has not
been seen about the consulate
since the awful catastrophe.
The naval board of inquiry
knows the trut,. about the cause
of the Names blowing up-and
expects to report it. The court is
composed of the most capable men
in the American navy, and they
are honest.
Expert divers who are enlisted
American sailors have sworn that
the ships side was smashed in
not out.
She was struck by a torpedo or
a mine under the bottom al the
left side.
Even the lower part of the heavy
armor belt is bent IN.
The greatest bending-in of the
massive plates was opposite frame
frame No. 70, just about across
from the big ten inch magazine,
which every one now knows did
not explode.
There is no room now for doubt
that somebody blew up the Maine
and killed 253 sleeping American
sailors.
On by one the sombre facts in
iron, in human flesh and in
expert testimony have piled up,
all in one direction, until there
is no room for doubt.
The inward twisted plates and
bended armor Simply drive
the convincing nail through all the
hundred-odd bits of material
evidence and clinches it.
Abraham Lincoln's ''plaiu
people of the United States" may
not quite see the value as proof of
a loaded ten-inch powder case
removed from magazine reported
to have exploded. They might still
halt in forcing the president into
action fer reparation, even after
knowing that every movable or
twisted-off thing on the Maine
wreck went towards instead of
away from the only interior
explosive force big enough to
destroy the Maine Is she has been
destroyed.
But when they now know that the
massive plates-splendid steel
have been forced and twisted and
bent toward and into the very
centre of the ship, they know the
Maine was struck from the outside.
Upon the mere intelligent in
spection of the pitable wreck above
water the spectator fairly shouts,
"Outside force"
When divers report the peculiar
direction of the explosive force in
the ships inside, conviction grows
stronger.
And when, finally, immense, ir-
REPUTABLE physical evidence comes
to light of a tremendous blow at
a certain point, the proper cause
of all other noted effects, convic-
ton becomes fixed.
And when they know that all
such tremendous forcing inward
was done under water they know
that somebody did it.
Who did it?
1t is now admitted that it is not
even remotely likely that Cubans
were engaged in the atrocity. They
have not the incentive, nor the
money, nor yet the immensely
powerful exploding force which
certainly was employed. No small
torpedo, even aided by a ton OF
saluting powder in the reserve
magazine, reduced the Maine into
it's present condition.
Indeed, of hundreds of rumors
with persons willing to swear to
them only one by any possibility