file. We passed a little creek called the San Juan River, and suddenly the popping of the Mauser rifles and rattle of rapid-fire guns was heard immediately ahead. We crouched down low and deployed skirmishers on the right along the river bottom. The woods were pretty thick, so that it was impossible to see the enemy, and the open ground was covered with grass shoulder high. The fire began to increase in rapidity, and men were falling on all sides. We then saw that the enemy occupied a beautiful position a mile away in a blockhouse at the head of a gently sloping hill. They had evidently calculated the range beforehand, as their shooting, contrary to our expectations, was accurate.

The command was soon given for our troops to retire to the shelter of the banks of the creek, and there we stood waist deep in water, waiting for the artillery and reinforcements to come up. All of this consumed a couple of hours. About noon we took our place in the general charge that advanced all along the line up the hill toward the blockhouse. Here we got right into the thick of it, and while the boys had said at Las Quasimas Targets for that we should never have such a hot fire again, the Sharpshooters. present fire was simply annihilating as compared to the other. Shells screamed overhead, bullets whistled all around, and rapid-fire guns belched out in murderous volleys. To stand at a man's full height meant certain death. The officers, unfortunately, were compelled to stand in order to see the position of the battlefield and to direct their men. As this exposed them to the direct fire of the enemy, as well as made them targets for the sharpshooters who were hid in trees all around, they suffered relatively greater than the men in the ranks. All of the general officers on horseback had their horses shot under them or abandoned them early in the game.

We went up the hill by short dashes, crouching low to the ground, and then would lie down for a few minutes before advancing again. The forced march of the night before, together with being on guard duty and the early marching of that morning had exhausted me so completely that at every stop I tried to take a short nap.

It was while 200 yards from the crest of the hill, lying down on the ground, that I suddenly felt as if a rock had hit me on the hand and shoulder. I got up with a start and saw that my right hand was bloody and shot through in three places. As it was impossible to fire my carbine in that state, I yelled out to my squad leader, Sergeant Walter Scosh, the old Princeton tackle of '89, that I was wounded and going to the rear.

I went back to the creek and there found several wounded men crouching behind the bank from the unceasing and pitiless fire overhead. Here the

value of the "First Help to the Wounded" bandages was practically proven. The men carried these, and when our wounds were roughly bound, we all realized that these ready bandages had saved many a poor wounded fellow's life. After dressing my wounded hand, I suggested that I felt something in my chest, and a colored soldier opened my shirt, through which there was a bullet hole, and found that my breast was covered with blood.

Several of the wounded men who could walk got together and we started for the rear where the air would be calmer. No one knew exactly where the rear was, and one man, a regular, who kept ducking every time a bullet would whistle by, was afraid to go either ahead or behind, to the right or to the left, but insisted on marching down into the creek as the only safe place. We went ahead, however, in one direction, trusting to luck, and finally struck the main road through which our troops were advancing, and after a tedious journey, reached the improvised hospital at Siboney, where our wounds received surgical attention.

T

THE ANSWER.

HE old lion stands in his lonely lair;

The noise of the hunting has broken his rest;
He scowls to the Eastward: tiger and bear
Are harrying his jungle; he turns to the West

And sends through the murk and mist of the night
A thunder that rumbles and rolls down the trail;
And tiger and bear, the quarry in sight,

Couch low in the covert, and cower and quail;

For deep through the night-gloom, like surf on a shore,
Peals thunder in answer, resounding with ire;
The hunters turn stricken: they know the dread roar :
The whelp of the lion is joining his sire.

L

SANGUINARY SAN JUAN HILL.

BY LIEUTENANT HERBERT HYDE TRUE.

IEUTENANT TRUE, of Company L, Seventy-first Regiment, has the distinction of being the first man to gain the crest of San Juan Hill, in the fierce assault of July 1. Before Santiago could be taken it was necessary that the Spanish works on San Juan should be captured. On the summit was a strong blockhouse about which several pieces of artillery were mounted and so posted as to threaten the hill slope with a plunging fire. In addition to these defences trenches were dug at frequent intervals on the hill and barbed-wire fences were strung to impede the approach. There was little open country, the slopes being covered with a dense underbrush, in which Spanish sharpshooters concealed themselves and, using smokeless powder, fired upon our advancing troops without discovering their own position. To prepare the way up this hill for the advance of troops not only required daring, but physical strength and endurance. General Hawkins selected Lieutenant True to command the pioneer corps of the First Brigade of the First Division, composed of picked men from the Seventy-first Regiment, the Sixth and the Sixteenth Infantry. This advance up the mountain side was the fiercest engagement of the war.

I remember that when we started I called out to the boys: "Come on, pioneers! We've got to take this hill. Let's do our duty, no matter what happens." The hill was very steep; so steep that we had to cling to the long grass to keep ourselves from falling backward. The Sixteenth and Sixth Infantry and the Seventy-first Regiment fellows circled to our left and right flanks. The higher up we went the more dangerous became our path. When we left Sevilla we started in column of fours, but we had to go in Indian file up the mountain road, over brooks and through ravines. We got along at a fair pace until we struck thick underbrush that was almost impenetrable, behind which were concealed Spanish sharpshooters with Mauser rifles and smokeless powder. We knew our position was dangerous and the quicker we got out of it the better. The quickest way was to go ahead and get at the Spaniards by cutting the barbed wire of the trocha. It was like trying to find a needle in a haystack, this locating the Spanish sharpshooters, for while their bullets kept singing in our ears we couldn't see them, hidden as they were by the trees and bushes.

By Column of Four,
Forward.

I saw an opening and we rushed through it. I called out: "We've got so far and we'll go the rest of the way." The boys cheered, and on we went with a rush. The Spanish artillery was at work in earnest, but every time. we saw shrapnel coming the men would shout "low bridge," and we'd throw ourselves flat. It was pretty warm work. Three men were shot beside me, but I was lucky enough to get off without being hit. The Spanish put up a good fight. I'll give them credit for that. The big balloon that followed

the Seventy-first along the charge helped them to locate our men, and their fire, although generally wild, was sometimes effective. The Americans had really underestimated their fighting ability. They knew how to shoot, and they had the advantage of knowing every inch of the ground. Still, they gave way when our men charged and retreated in a hurry. Our pioneer corps cut the wires with clippers and axes, and not a man was killed.

Hurrah, the Victory is Ours!

I was the first man to reach the summit of San Juan Hill, and I think it was our quick action that saved our lives. The Spaniards were not expecting such an impetuous charge, and we took them by surprise.

The greatest strain came upon us the night after the first day's battle. I didn't sleep a wink, but spent the night looking after my men. The smell from rotting vegetation accumulated for years was almost overpowering as we lay in the trenches, but there was not a murmur. The second day's fighting was really more exciting than the first, but we had got used to being under fire and didn't mind it. Bullets flew about us like hailstones, and men fell all around us. We had to cross a couple of creeks. in which we waded waist deep against stong currents, and it was at the creek near the field hospital that the Spaniards did the most damage. Even our wounded and the Red Cross nurses carry disabled men were shot down.

I want particularly to praise the Twenty-fourth Infantry, colored. They did everything in their power to help the Seventy-first boys, and some of them even gave up their places and rations to our men.

T

HIGH OLD JINKS AT SANTIAGO.

BY SERGEANT OUSLER.

HAT story about Assistant Surgeon Church, the young Washington medico of the Rough Riders, who dressed a fallen man's wound away out ahead of the line amid a hail of Mauser bullets, has been published, but the coolness of that young fellow wasn't even half described. While he was making an examination of his wounded comrade, paying no attention to the whistle of the bullets, a young private of the Rough Riders, who had been a college mate of Church at Princeton, yelled over to him from a distance of about twenty feet-he was with half a dozen fellows doing sharpshooters' work from behind a cluster of bushes-to ask

how badly the patient was hurt. The young surgeon looked over his shoulder in the direction whence the private's voice proceeded, and saw his former chum grinning in the bushes.

"Why, you whelp," said Church, with a comical grin on his face, "how dare you be around here and not be killed!"

Then he went on fixing the wounded man, and he remained right there with him until the arrival of the litter that he had sent to the rear for.

In my cavalry outfit there was a fellow with whom I soldiered out West four or five years ago. He was a crack base bali pitcher, and he would rather play ball than eat, any time. He got a Mauser ball plumb through the biceps of his right arm early in the engagement. I never saw a man so darned mad over a thing in my life. The wound pained him a good deal, but it wasn't the pain that hurt so much. I met him at the rear after the scrap was over. He had tried to go on shooting with his carbine but he couldn't make it go with his left hand and arm alone, and so re had to drop back. He was alternately rubbing his arm and scratching his head when I came across him.

"Hurt much?" I asked him.

"Hurt nothing!" said he, scowling like a savage; "but did you ever hear of such luck as this, to get plugged right in my pitching arm? Why the devil didn't they get me in the neck, or somewhere else, anyhow? I'll never be able to pitch another game, I'll bet $2, for these muscles are going to contract when the hole heals up," and he went on swearing to beat the band, because the Spaniards hadn't let him have it in the neck, or somewhere else.

What Made Him So Tarnat Mad?

One of the fellows in the Rough Riders, an Oklahoma boy, got a ball clean through his campaign hat, which was whirled off his head and fell about five feet away from him. He picked up the hat, examined it carefully, and said:

"I'll have to patch that up with a sticking plaster, or I'll get my hair sunburnt." The fun of it was that his hair was about the reddest I ever saw.

Roosevelt was some distance ahead of the line during the whole scrap, moving up and down with a word here and there to the company and troop commanders. One of the Rough Riders from New York rubber-necked after Roosevelt a good deal and watched him narrowly, and then he turned to one of the men alongside him and said:

"And yet, by jing, a couple o' years ago we people in New York didn't think Teddy knew enough to review a parade o' cops!"

There wasn't a single case of the yellows during the entire fracas. There wasn't a man that tried to edge behind a fellow in front of him, and