Yellow fever might prove a more deadly enemy than Spanish troops, and the commanding general, while doubtless deploring the position in which the haste and heedlessness of incompetent aids had placed him, seems to have felt that wisdom demanded an immediate advance. At all events, no delay was made, the troops being at once set in motion towards the enemy's lines of defence. On the day of landing a reinforcement of sixteen hundred men, comprising the Thirty-third and one battalion of the Thirty-fourth Michigan Volunteers, set sail on the Yale from Hampton Roads, and other reinforcements were rapidly preparing to follow.

The advance began on the 23d, the Cubans serving as skirmishers in front of General Shafter's army, and having several brushes with the retreating Spaniards as the latter fell back. Colonel Wagner, with fifty picked men from General Lawton's brigade, formed the skirmish line, assisted by some two hundred Cuban scouts, whose familiarity with the country and the Spanish mode of fighting rendered them of much utility. Juragua, some eight miles from the landing-place, was reached without a check, the guns of the fleet protecting the movement up to that point. The Spaniards seemed to have left the place in haste after an ineffectual attempt to burn it.

The scouting party pushed on to the west, and at a short distance came suddenly upon a party of Spanish soldiers, who exchanged shots briskly with the Cubans, two of whom were killed and eight wounded. As the skirmishers fell back, the Twenty-second regulars came up at the double quick, drawn by the firing; but the Spaniards were already in retreat and had sought the shelter of the woods. By night a junction was effected

between the main divisions of the army of invasion at a point on the high ground back from the coast, and within ten miles of Morro Castle.

At nightfall of the 25th all the troops were on shore, and the Cubans of Garcia's army, some three thousand in number, had been brought by water from Ascerraderos, west of the harbor, and landed at Juragua. Most of the horses, also, were on firm land. With a single steam barge and a fleet of small boats, General Shafter had landed over fifteen thousand men, hundreds of horses and mules, and a large quantity of supplies on a difficult beach, only two men losing their lives and about fifty animals being drowned. The animals had to be pushed in the water and towed ashore. Of the supplies, hardly a package was lost.

CHAPTER XIV.

THE RAID OF THE ROUGH RIDERS.

WHILE the work of landing the army of invasion and its supplies was still in progress, the first battle had taken place on Cuban soil. The Spaniards had made a stand in force, and the vanguard of the army had received its baptism of fire. Raw as the troops were and difficult as the ground, they had behaved with conspicuous gallantry, winning victory in the face of much larger forces placed in ambush and with every advantage of position. This battle merits special attention as the first, with the exception of the minor affair at Guantanamo Bay, fought by American soldiers since the close of the Civil War, thirty-three years before. In it sons of the South and of the North fought side by side, and proved themselves worthy the reputation for courage and daring which their fathers had won on many a hard-fought field a third of a century in the past.

The men who had the honor of taking part in this initial engagement were all of the cavalry arm of the service, horsemen serving as infantry. The position was one in which horses could not have been employed had there been any to use. The force consisted of eight troops of Colonel Wood's regiment, Roosevelt's Rough Riders as they will be known in history, and four troops each of the First and the Tenth Cavalry, a total force of nine hundred and sixty-four men, constituting nearly the whole of General Wheeler's cavalry command.