CHAPTER XI.

From San Antonio-For Tampa-On the Way-Off to Cuba-On Landing at Capron Colonel Roosevelt Charges-Incidents-Colonel Roosevelt in Daiquiri-On the March-"Forward”-General Young's Fight-Rough Riders in Battle for the First time-"Don't Swear, Shoot"-Death of Fish and Command-Army Food-Money for Food out of Colonel's Pocket-In Camp-Waiting for Santiago.

HE journey by rail from San Antonio to Tampa, Florida, took four days. The men were hilariously joyful all the way and could not understand why "Teddy" Roosevelt should read a book at every spare moment, just as though going to war was a usual thing with him. The Colonel might have answered that, while going to this sort of war was a novelty to him, yet he had engaged in many a battle of another sort with faulty politicians, grabbing office-seekers, and the like, and that Spain would prove a better foe than corrupt men in office who were willing to wreck the name of their country in dishonorable conflict with the law, while Spain was a foe whose weapons might be met with weapons of the same kind by honest men.

On Sunday, May 29th, the regiment of Rough Riders went from their hot, dusty camp to take the cars for Tampa, Fla. With the first three sections of troops went Colonel Wood. Colonel Roosevelt went with the remaining four. The railroad had scheduled a fortyeight hour trip, but the experience of the officers in loading the train told them that the schedule time would go for little-there were not proper facilities for getting the horses on and off the train, nor for feeding or watering them; while there was confusion and delay among the railway officials all along the line. Colonel Roosevelt's four sections went to the cars in the afternoon, Colonel Wood's three sections having taken the rest of the day in getting off. It was

quite dusk when Colonel Roosevelt's lines of dusty troops marched into the station yard. The men worked till past midnight before the horses and baggage were got on the train, and then they learned that the passenger cars had been delayed for some reason or other, and would not be on hand for hours. At dawn the passenger trains came up and one by one were fillled by the men till all were provided for, Colonel Roosevelt taking the last car. There were four days of hot

and dusty travel.

"Everywhere the people came out to greet us and cheer us. They brought us flowers, they brought us watermelons and other fruit, and sometimes jugs and pails of milk, all of which we greatly appreciated. We were traveling through a region where practically all the older men had served in the Confederate army, and where the younger men had all their lives long drunk in the endless tales told by their elders at home, at the cross-roads taverns and in the court-house squares about the cavalry of Forrest and Morgan and the infantry of Jackson and Hood. The blood of the old men stirred to the distant breath of battle; the blood of the young men leaped hot with eager desire to accompany us. The older women who remembered the dreadful misery of war, the misery that presses its iron weight most heavily on the wives and the little ones, looked sadly at us; but the young girls drove down in bevies, arrayed in all their finery, to wave flags in farewell to the troopers and to beg cartridges and buttons as mementoes. Everywhere we saw the Stars and Stripes, and everywhere we were told, half laughing, by grizzled ex-Confederates, that they had never dreamed in by-gone days of bitterness to greet the old flag as they now were greeting it, and to send their sons as they now were sending them to fight and die under it."

It was all one country now; there was now only one flag and it had been threatened; there was now no "Johnny Reb," no "mudsill from the North," but only one brotherhood, one nation of Americans, and a foreign country had wronged and defied us.

After four uncomfortable days the troops disembarked at Tampa. There was no one to meet them, to tell them where they were to go into camp; no one to issue food for the first twenty-four hours; the men had to buy rations out of their own pockets, and they seized any wagons that came to hand to take the spare baggage to the camping ground which they at last found had been allotted to them. Colonel Roosevelt did all he could to keep order, going about it like a veteran, as the men said; but it was only when the ground was reached that confusion was allayed. Tents were put up, pickets established, and the camp policed. However, they were to be but a few days at Tampa. Colonel Roosevelt was notified that the expedition was to start for a destination, not divulged at the time; that the horses were to be left behind, and only eight troops of seventy men each taken. The sorrow of the men at leaving their horses was outweighed by the joy of getting near the scene of action. But it was hard work to select the men who were to stay. More than one man, officer and private, burst into tears when he found he was not to go.

Orders were received on the evening of June 7th that the selected troops forming the expedition were to start from Port Tampa, nine miles away, at daybreak the following morning. The transport was overloaded; the men were packed in like sardines; the traveling rations issued to the men were insufficient, and the "canned beef," which afterward caused so much trouble to the Department at Washington, was much in evidence. But all things seemed of small importance to the men alongside the fact that they were really off and that they were the first expedition to go. Next morning came word that the order to sail had been countermanded. What this meant no one could understand at the time. It turned out afterwards that this was due to the blunder of a Navy officer who mistook some of the vessels for the Spanish fleet, and by his report there was consternation brought to Washington, until the matter was set to rights.

Meanwhile the men packed in the troop-ships gasped in the great heat of Tampa harbor.

At last, on the evening of June 13th, the Yucatan, with the Rough Riders on board, along with the other ships, received orders to start. Ship after ship weighed anchor and made for the distant mouth of the harbor. Flags flew, bands played cheerily, the troopers clustered in the rigging or swarming the decks cheered and shouted to those left behind and to the other men on the other ships.

We were going at last! After the miserable wait, the heat, the bad food and the idleness we were on our way, and we might sing "The Girl I Left Behind Me" above the din of the bands playing a Sousa March. It was glorious! It was a picnic! It was better than the plains or the counting-house; we were representing the Army; we were full-fledged soldiers now that we were off and could not be stopped till we were at the point for which we had longed ever since the organization of the regiment!

Sailing southward through the tropic seas toward the unknown! The Rough Riders were young, they were eager to come face to face with what lay hidden before them-wild for adventure where risk might be had, and gain for the risk. They wondered whether they were to attack Santiago or Porto Rico. They lounged in groups telling stories of their past life, of mining camps, cattle ranges; stories of hunting bear and deer; stories of war trails against Indians; stories less beautiful of deeds of violence, of brawls in saloons where cheating gamblers met their death; stories of mining-camps, sad love-tales and tales of love that had been too merry. And at night, when their laughter shot across the iridescent water and the Southern Cross glowed in the heavens, war seemed as far off as ever.

On the morning of June 22, landing was effected at Daiquiri, a village where there had been a railway and iron works. There was plenty of excitement in the landing. First of all the smaller war ves

sels shelled Daiquiri in order to dislodge any Spaniards who might be in the neighborhood. They also shelled other places along the coast to keep the enemy puzzled as to the intention of the "Americanos." Then the surf was very high and landing had its difficulties, and the task of getting men, ammunition and provisions ashore was not easy. Each man had to carry three days' rations and a hundred rounds of ammunition. The Rough Riders had two rapid-fire Colt automatic guns and a dynamite gun. There was considerable trouble in getting these ashore. Horses were being landed from another transport, together with the mules, by simply throwing them overboard and letting them swim ashore. Both of Colonel Wood's horses swam it; one of Colonel Roosevelt's was drowned, but the little Texan steed got a foothold and was saved.

Late in the afternoon the men, with ammunition and provisions were on dry land and ready for the Spaniards. Camp was made on a dusty brush-covered flat, with a jungle on one side and a fetid pool of water on the other. General Lawton had taken the advance, and he at once established outposts and placed reconnoitering parties on the trails.

The afternoon of the next day orders came to the Rough Riders to march. General Wheeler was as anxious as General Lawton to have first blood, and he wished to put the cavalry division to the front as soon as possible. The Spaniards had had a skirmish with some Cubans who had been repulsed. General Wheeler made a personal reconnoissance and finding out where the enemy was he directed General Young to take the Rough Riders' brigade and move forward to strike him next morning.

"It was mid-afternoon," says Colonel Roosevelt, "and the Tropic sun was beating fiercely down when Colonel Wood started our regiment-the First and Tenth Cavalry and some of the infantry regiments having already marched. Colonel Wood himself rode in