While I was dining with Captain Garcia his orderly was fanning the flies away from me.  The country is beautiful, nothing but mountains and valleys.  With American people here it will be worthy to have the island called the Gem of the Antilles.  I can thank God that I have had the best of health and only two of us in the company have not had the fever.  I seem to have gained in weight and full flushed in the face.

This letter was written just before the battle of Santiago: 

Ten Miles North of Baiquiri, June 29, 1898.

Dear Jim:  I am writing this on picket.  My troop was sent to the front and we are bivouacked in the woods.  Oranges, lemons and cocoanuts are plentiful, and every trooper has his canteen full of lemonade all the time.  We were seventeen days on the transport, but did not suffer.  Every one is in good spirits and anxious to get at the dons.  Dick.

The following breezy letter was written by a Washington lad in the trenches around Santiago: 

Siboney, July 7.

My Dear General:  Have really been too busy to write.  Have been in a real nice, lively battle, and wasn’t a bit scared and didn’t run.  The poor old Twenty-fourth.  Markley commands the regiment now, and temporarily the brigade.  He is a daisy.  He really ought to get something.  So ought every one.  It was glorious.  Only so many were killed and wounded.  Poor old Shafter.  Everybody is roasting him because he was lying on his back in the rear having his head rubbed, which isn’t my idea of what a commander should do.

About myself:  I was upset by a shell back of Grimes’ battery July 1, which killed some people.  Very miraculous.  Only I didn’t get a scratch to show for it, and, although I most conscientiously wished for a bullethole, didn’t get one the rest of the fight.  I overdid the business a little, rode to the rear twice that day and back, and then walked after they shot my mule.  Well, anyway, July 2 I was with Blank when he was forced back from San Juan hill.  He told me it was the hottest fire any artillery has had to stand in modern times.  Then he pulled out.  Well, the fever came on the 3d, and I have been sort of half crazy and delirious the last four days.  It isn’t yellow fever, though, although it probably will be.  I’ll cable if it gets serious.  Really, I have distinguished myself, and, if I pull out, may lead a fairly decent life and be rather a credit.  If anything does happen to me I’ll feel like such an ass for not being bowled over like a gentleman in the battle last week.  Love to all.  Charlie.

P. S.—­This is a little disconnected on account of forty grains of quinine to-day.

Member of the Houston post rifles paints A roseate picture.

Santiago de Cuba, August 6, 1898.

Dear Mother:  I am now in Cuba.  I like Santiago; it is much cooler here than at Camp Caffery.