. An illustrated history of our war with Spain : its causes, incidents, and results. s,of widening the roads for bringing up guns or food was tothem a puzzle. They would cheerfully scout, but they wouldnot work with spades and picks; and naturally the Americansbecame indignant Avhen they saw the Cubans sitting aroundmunching the food brought up with so much difficulty, whilehard digging in trenches was to be done. These half clad,lean, and dusky fellows would sneak through the underbrushup under the noses of the Spaniards, and when hit with a bul-let would throw up their arms, shout Cuba Libre
. An illustrated history of our war with Spain : its causes, incidents, and results. s,of widening the roads for bringing up guns or food was tothem a puzzle. They would cheerfully scout, but they wouldnot work with spades and picks; and naturally the Americansbecame indignant Avhen they saw the Cubans sitting aroundmunching the food brought up with so much difficulty, whilehard digging in trenches was to be done. These half clad,lean, and dusky fellows would sneak through the underbrushup under the noses of the Spaniards, and when hit with a bul-let would throw up their arms, shout Cuba Libre, and dropdead; but all the Cubans in Cuba could not have taken San-tiago. Our soldiers could readily understand why the Span-iards had never been able to drive them out of such a country,and why the Cubans had seldom shown a disposition to fightin the open. Gomezs plan of Avearing out Spain was theonly one in which his picturesque forces had any chance ofsuccess. But leaving the possible -assistance of the Cubans out ofthe question, General Shafter took an optimistic view of the. REASONS FOR PROMPT ACTION 697 situation as lie found it at the front. So weakly had the Span-iards resisted his landing when they might have made it ex-ceedingly difficult, so quickly had they abandoned strong posi-tions and fallen back on their intrenchments, that Shafterthought they could be easily beaten out of their last everything went to confirm him in this opinion. De-sertei-s from Santiago told him of the desperate condition ofthe Spaniards in the city. It had been expected that theyAvould make a strong defense of Aguadores near the coast andon the left of the American line, for they had strongly in-trenched it and had some artillery there, but on the 30th theydeserted it and moved to the seaward fortifications a little tothe west and containing the strongest batteries on the they were within reach of the fleet, and therefore the leftof the American line was ordered to
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