ning westward and northward over the divide to Barranquito, whence Aibonito could be taken in the rear. Meanwhile, on the 12th, to engage the Spaniards' attention and develop their strength, Major Lancaster took a field battery to a hilltop on the left of the road and opened fire upon the works on the hill of Asomanta. At first the Spanish guns replied feebly, and Major Lancaster thought he had silenced them; but after an hour's firing, when his ammunition was running low, the enemy apparently received reinforcements, and he found his battery the target of a hail of shells and bullets, his smoke powder helping the Spaniards to get his range. His position was evidently untenable, and the guns were withdrawn, Lieutenant Hains, who commanded one of them, being shot through the body, and the battery's whole loss being one man killed and six wounded, one mortally. Knowing that he might at any moment receive news of an armistice, General Wilson delayed Ernst's flanking movement and sent a flag of truce to the Spanish lines with a demand for surrender. The message was forwarded to San Juan, to the captain-general, whose reply, received early the next morning (August 13th) was a curt refusal; and Ernst was on the point of starting when General Miles telegraphed from Ponce the order to suspend operations. Brooke's advance from Arroyo. General Brooke's advance, too, was halted at the very moment when a sharp fight was imminent. His disembarkation at Arroyo was slow, there being no wharf and few available boats, and two of his transports being delayed by running aground at Ponce. On August 5th the infantry was ready to move, and that morning General Hains marched upon Guayama with the Fourth Ohio (Colonel Coit) and the Third Illinois (Colonel Ben nitt), the former leading the way. About a mile from the town the Ohioans encountered a small number of Spaniards, who fired a few shots and retreated through Guayama, of which the Americans took possession. Just beyond the town, on the road to Cayey, there was another skirmish, the enemy being dispersed again by the Ohio regiment's dynamite guns. No further advance was made till the 8th, when General Hains ordered a company of the Fourth Ohio to reconnoitre toward Cayey. Colonel Coit took two companies, and three miles out they came under a sharp fire from Spaniards posted on a hill commanding the road, near the village of Pablo Vasquez. The enemy had the range accurately, and the reconnoitring party could do nothing but seek shelter and then fall back, which they did with five men wounded. They met the rest of the regiment, with the dynamite guns, hurrying out to support them, an alarming report of disaster having reached Guayama. Again General Brooke was forced to wait, in order to get his cavalry and artillery ashore and to the front. On the 12th he issued orders for an attack, his plan being to threaten the Spanish position with the Third Illinois, a battalion of the Fourth Pennsylvania, and a couple of batteries, while General Hains, with the Fourth Ohio, marched northward into the hills to take it in the rear. Hains set out early next morning, and was close upon the enemy-who would seemingly have been taken by surprise, and could scarcely have escaped capture, Brooke's guns being ready to open fire upon them in front-when a staff officer overtook him with news of the signing of the protocol. The navy, which had opened the way for Miles's troops at Guanica, at Ponce, and at Arroyo, conducted practically no offensive operations during the last days of the campaign. It made a small diversion by sending ashore thirty-five sailors and marines from the Amphitrite at Cape San Juan, on August 6th. The landing party, commanded by Lieutenant Atwater, occupied the Cape San Juan lighthouse, and defended it against a night attack by some one hundred and twenty Spanish mounted infantry; but on the 9th, as the advantage of holding the place seemed slight, Captain Barclay withdrew his men. They had suffered no casualties, except the fatal wounding of Naval Cadet Boardman by the accidental discharge of a revolver. A reason for the comparative inaction of the navy may possibly be found in certain despatches which General Miles sent to the Secretary of War. One was dated from Ponce, August 9th: I am informed the naval vessels at this place have been ordered round to San Juan. In order that there may be no conflict of authority I request that no aggressive action be taken against that place, that no landings be made, or communication held with the Spanish officials or forces on this island by the navy. And on the following day the general telegraphed to Secretary Alger: * I am fully convinced that Sampson has sent orders to the commander of this fleet, as soon as army leaves south coast, to take his fleet, go round to San Juan, and demand the surrender of the capital or bombard the city, and not to waste ammunition on any of the batteries. First, to bombard a city containing innocent women and children would be a violation of the first order of the President. Second, it is an interference with the work given the army by the President. I ask that any such action be suspended. After we have raised the flag over all the principal cities and arrived at San Juan, any aid by the navy against land batteries, intrenchments, or fortifications would be advisable, but not against a city of non-combatants. The control of all military affairs on the land of this island can safely be left to the army. * This despatch is not among those published by the War Department, but it appeared in the New York Sun, July 3, 1899, and is presumably authentic. It is only natural that General Miles should have been anxious to finish his well-planned campaign with his own forces, but these letters certainly show professional jealousy carried to an ex treme. Commander Davis, of the Dixie, submitted to Sampson, on August 2d, a plan for taking San Juan by a bombardment from the ocean front and by landing marines and light guns at the eastern end of the island on which the city lies; and it can hardly be doubted that Sampson would have been willing to sanction the attack, which would have been tolerably sure of success. CHAPTER XVI THE MANILA CAMPAIGN LIKE the invasion of Porto Rico, the campaign which completed Dewey's triumph in Manila Bay by forcing the surrender of the Philippine capital involved little actual fighting; but it was interesting in a military sense, from the novelty and the difficulty of the work it set before the American army, and its political importance was still more momentous. It marked, indeed, a new era of history for the United States, setting its flag over a great empire in the eastern hemisphere, and making it no longer an American power merely, but a world power. Very few Americans, even among those in authority at Washington, realized this in the early days of May, 1898, when hurried preparations to follow up Dewey's victory were afoot. The irresistible logic of events-destiny, if the term be preferred-was swiftly making obsolete the policy that had guided American statesmanship for more than a century; yet it is hard to single out any precise point as that of the new departure, or, indeed, any point at which it was feasible to halt or turn back. Dewey's instructions (cabled from Washington on April 24th) were to " commence operations, particularly against the Spanish fleet." A previous telegram (February 25th) warned him that in case of war his duty would be "offensive operations in |