“Although no attempt was made to humiliate them, the Spanish soldiers seemed to feel their disgrace keenly, and scarcely glanced at their conquerors as they passed by. But this apparent depth of feeling was not displayed by the other regiments. Without being sullen, the Spaniards appeared to be utterly indifferent to the reverses suffered by the Spanish arms, and some of them, when not under the eyes of their officers, seemed to secretly rejoice at the prospect of food and an immediate return to Spain.

“General Toral, throughout the ceremony, was sorely dejected. When General Shafter introduced him by name to each member of his staff, the Spanish general appeared to be a very broken man. He seems to be about sixty years of age, and of frail constitution, although stern resolution shone in every feature. The lines are strongly marked, and his face is deep drawn, as if with physical pain.

“General Toral replied with an air of abstraction to the words addressed to him, and when he accompanied General Shafter at the head of the escort into the city, to take formal possession of Santiago, he spoke but few words. The appealing faces of the starving refugees streaming back into the city did not move him, nor did the groups of Spanish soldiers lining the road and gazing curiously at the fair-skinned, stalwart-framed conquerors. Only once did a faint shadow of a smile lurk about the corners of his mouth.

“This was when the cavalcade passed through a [pg 298]barbed-wire entanglement. No body of infantry could ever have got through this defence alive, and General Shafter’s remark about its resisting power found the first gratifying echo in the defeated general’s heart.

“Farther along the desperate character of the Spanish resistance, as planned, amazed our officers. Although primitive, it was well done. Each approach to the city was thrice barricaded and wired, and the barricades were high enough and sufficiently strong to withstand shrapnel. The slaughter among our troops would have been frightful had it ever become necessary to storm the city.

“Around the hospitals and public buildings and along the west side of the line there were additional works and emplacements for guns, though no guns were mounted in them.

“The streets of Santiago are crooked, with narrow lines of one-storied houses, most of which are very dilapidated, but every veranda of every house was thronged by its curious inhabitants,—disarmed soldiers. These were mostly of the lower classes.

“Few expressions of any kind were heard along the route. Here and there was a shout for free Cuba from some Cuban sympathiser, but as a rule there were only low mutterings. The better class of Spaniards remained indoors, or satisfied their curiosity from behind drawn blinds.

“Several Spanish ladies in tumble-down carriages averted their faces as we passed. The squalor in the [pg 299]streets was frightful. The bones of dead horses and other animals were bleaching in the streets, and buzzards, as tame as sparrows, hopped aside to let us pass.

“The windows of the hospitals, in which there are over fifteen hundred sick men, were crowded with invalids, who dragged themselves there to witness our incoming.

“The palace was reached soon after ten o’clock. There General Toral introduced General Shafter and the other American generals to the alcalde, SeÑor Feror, and to the chief of police, SeÑor Guiltillerrez, as well as to the other municipal authorities.

“Luncheon was then served at the palace. The meal consisted mainly of rum, wine, coffee, rice, and toasted cake. This scant fare occasioned many apologies on the part of the Spaniards, but it spoke eloquently of their heroic resistance. The fruit supply of the city was absolutely exhausted, and the Spaniards had nothing to live on except rice, on which the soldiers in the trenches of Santiago have subsisted for the last twelve days.”

Ten thousand people witnessed the ceremony of hoisting the stars and stripes over the governor’s palace in Santiago.

A finer stage setting for a dramatic episode it would be difficult to imagine. The palace, a picturesque old dwelling in the Moorish style of architecture, faces the Plaza de la Reina, the principal public square. [pg 300]Opposite rises the imposing Catholic cathedral. On one side is a quaint, brilliantly painted building with broad verandas, the club of San Carlos; on the other a building of much the same description, the CafÉ de la Venus.

Across the plaza was drawn up the Ninth Infantry, headed by the Sixth Cavalry band. In the street facing the palace stood a picked troop of the Second Cavalry, with drawn sabres, under command of Captain Brett. Massed on the stone flagging between the band and the line of horsemen were the brigade commanders of General Shafter’s division, with their staffs. On the red-tiled roof of the palace stood Captain McKittrick, Lieutenant Miles, and Lieutenant Wheeler. Immediately above them, above the flagstaff, was the illuminated Spanish arms, and the legend, “Vive Alphonso XIII.”

All about, pressing against the veranda rails, crowding to windows and doors, and lining the roofs, were the people of the town, principally women and non-combatants.

As the chimes of the old cathedral rang out the hour of twelve, the infantry and cavalry presented arms. Every American uncovered, and Captain McKittrick hoisted the stars and stripes. As the brilliant folds unfurled in the gentle breeze against the fleckless sky, the cavalry band broke into the strains of “The Star Spangled Banner,” making the American pulse leap and the American heart thrill with joy.