The daily morning journal and courier., 1898-08-23


 land, looks enough like the Washing
 ton monument to give the wanderer a
 home-sick pang. The low hills that en-
 compass southeastern Cuba, rising in natural terraces from the waters edge,
 remind me of the artificially terraces slopes of the Peruvian Andes, whereon
 the Incas cultivated their cocoa. Far
 ther to the westward the hills mound
 higher and higher, until merged in the
 dark cloud-canopied maestro (master)
 mountains, along which we coast with
 in mile of the wave-beaten coral rock
 which forms their base. Later in the
 day Guantanamo is passed, the erst-
 While unimportant point where history
 has lately been made. The name, by
 the way, is pronounced Wan-tan-ah
 mo, with the accent so strong upon the
 tan that the two remaining syllables
 are an tndistinguishable tumble. In it's
 broad inner bay, separated from the sea
 by long, narrow stretch between two
 low promontories, we saw a dozen ships
 at anchor, men, -of-war, transports, prizes, the Red Cross steamer State of Texas" the "Resolute,'' bringing down immune nurses, and other supply and relief ships in the service of our army.
 Then comes the place where our troops
 were first landed on Cuban soil, and the dreary hills up which the Rough Riders stormed in the face of Spanish guns. Human life was held so cheap during those few stirring but awful days, when the young and strong and ambitious died with a cheer on their lips. Over there are the trenches where our hun gry soldiers lay in the rain, where more precious lives were yielded up from needless hardship and exposure than were taken by the enemys bull lets; and somewhere there is the silent bivouac wherein two thousand mothers
 boys await the resurrection morning.
 Then comes Siboney, the great fever
 camp, where are now six hundred pa tients. But 1t is not yellow fever thank Heaven! The mothers at home
 may set their minds at rest on that. It
 is mostly the local calentura-an acute
 malaria, bad enough to be sure, but which, in the majority of cases, runs it's painful course in a few days, leaving the patient weak as baby on the road to recovery. There is typhoid fever,
 too, and much dysentery; and no doubt | there are some cases of the dreaded
 yellow type. Siboney lies sixteen miles
 east of Santiago, connected by railway, and as I shall visit 1t in a few days, we need say no more about 1t at present.
 Neither need we waste any space in de- scribing Moro Castle, after all that has been said about 1t in these last few | months To-day it is considerably de- | moralized in the upper story. Let us hope and pray and plead that there be no attempt at reconstructing that an- tique pile of infamous history. After the storms and assaults of three hun- dred years, to rebuild the picturesque ruin on the American plan would be | little short of sacrilege But in all probability 1t will presently be bricked and pointed up and freshly painted, and made to look as ridiculous as the modern houses with the Queen Anne front and the Mary Ann back, so fre- quently seen in our rural districts.
 Just around the corner of the Moro | promontory, a little way inside the mar
 row, winding channel, Hes what Is left l of the Merrimac, just where young 1 Hobson sunk her. and as the first civil 1 ian ship to follow him steamed slowly | by, every passenger took off his hat or | waved her handkerchief in memory of | that deed of valor. A little farther on | lies the wreck of the Reina Mercedes | one of Cevera's fleet, you know, which put back, hoping to save herself, when the fire from our ships became too hot
 on that historic day. The rest of the 1 Spanish fleet, by the way, lies to the i westward of Santiago, scattered along
 the coast a distance of forty miles.
 1 Late in the afternoon we came to 1 anchor amid a lot of Spanish prizes, gun-boats, transports and men-of-war
 In front lay the old city on it's sloping | hillside, it's towers and steeples all in- tact, apparently not much damaged by
 our bombardment. It was too late to
 think of landing, and so we spent an
 other night on ship board, amid a pest of mosquitoes and smells indescribabe. | Strange to say, although the day had
 been excessively hot the evening was
 uncomfortably cold, a feature of the
 climate on this part of Cuba, which is no doubt largely responsible for much of the sickness among our soldiers
 The clamor of vesper bells came faint l ly to our ears as we sat on deck, and l through the captains glass we could 1 see the uphill streets all swarmed with
 soldiers, American Spanish and Cuban; l but none on board who went to peaee- ful lumber in his berth that night had any idea of the horrors of war he was
 going to find on the morrow--of heart rending scenes that would murder sleep | for many weary night thereafter
 | FANNIE BRIGHAM WARD.