The daily morning journal and courier., 1905-08-12
SAN JUAN SEVEN YEARS LATER
And the Cuban Camp of the Rough

And the Cuban Camp of the Rough
 Riders as it Appears To-day.
 On July i, seven years ago, when the American army came upon it out of the jungle, the place wore a partial dis guise. It still was an irregular ridge of smiling, sunny hills, with fat, comfort able curves, and in some places steep, straight front. But above the steepest, highest front froWned an aggressive Block House, and on all the slopes and along the skyline were rows of yellow trenches, and at the base a. cruel cats cradle of barbed wire. It was like ths face of pretty women behind Lhe bars of visor. I find that on the day of the fight seven years ago l cabled my paper that San Juan Hill reminded the Americans of "a sunny orchard in New England." That was how it may have looked when the regulars were climbing up the steep front to capture the Block House, and when the caval- ry and Rough Riders, having taken Kettle Hill, were running down it's op- posite slope, past the lake, to take that, crest of San Juan Hill which lies to the right of the Block House. It may then have looked like sunny New England orchard, but before night fell the in- trenching tools had lent those sunny slopes a fierce and terrible aspect" And after that, hour after hour, art day after day, we saw the hill eaten u by our trenches, hidden by a vast laun dry of shelter tents, and torn apart b. bomb proofs, their jutting roofs o
 logs and broken branches weighet down by earth and stones and looking like the pIt-mouths to many. n1inesE That probably is. how most of the American army last. saw San Juan Hill, and that probably is how it bes
 remembers it--as a fortified camp
 That was seven years ago. When, few weeks since, revisited it, san Juan Hill was again a sunny, smiling farmland, the. trenches planted witf vegetables the roofs of the bomb. proofs fallen in and buried beneatl creeping vines, and the barbed-wire en- tanglements holding in check onlysthe browsing cattle.
 Of all the camps the one that, to-day DSCbIo lI4C olEOLIStSL GNluSllGGS OL us OC"- | cupation is that of the Rough Riders A part of the camp of that regiment. which was situated on the ridge some ] one, hundred feet from the Santiago road, was pitched under clump O. shade trees. and to-day, even aftenSev- erl years, the trunks of these trees bear the names and initials of the men who camped beneath them. These men wiIl remember that when they took this hill they found that the Notifications beneath the trees were partly made from the foundations of an, adobe house. The red tiles. from the roof still litter the ground These tiles and the names cut in the bark of the trees de- termine absolutely the site of one-half of the camp, but the other half. where stood Tiffany's quick-f1ring gun and Parker's Calling, has been almost ob- liberated. The tree under which Colo. nel Roosevelt pitched his tent I could not discover, and the trenches. in which he used to sit with officers and with the officers of the regiments of the regular army are now Ieveled to make d kitch en-garden. Sometimes the presen1 President is said to too generously give office and promotion to the friends ht made in Cuba. These men he met1ir the trenches were theen not necessarily his friends. To-day they are not ne. cessarily his friends. They are the me1 the free life of the rifle-pits enabled him to know and to understand as tn, settled relations of home lifeand peac1 would never have permitted. At Una
 time none of them guessed that ths amateur colonel'' to whom they talked