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The only movement of the day which did not meet with success was General Duffield's attempt to occupy the sea village of Aguadores.
Meanwhile the battle was raging fiercely at Caney and Aguadores. In General Lawton's division the Second Massachusetts up to the middle of the day sustained the heaviest loss, although other regiments were more actively engaged. During the afternoon the fight for the possession of Caney was most obstinate, and the ultimate victory reflects great credit upon the American troops.
Colonel Pearson commanded the Second brigade, composed of the Second, Tenth and Twenty-first regular infantry, while the Third brigade, commanded by Colonel Worth, consisted of the Ninth, Thirteenth and Twenty- fourth regular infantry. Aguadores was their objective point.
It was a long and tedious wait for the ships before the second fifty car-loads of troops came puffing along from Altares. By 9.30 the last of the soldiers had left the open railroad tracks, disappearing in the thick brush that covered the eastern side of Aguadores inlet. The water in the sponge tubes under the breeches of the big guns was growing hot in the burning sun.
The plan of attack by way of Aguadores and Morro was regarded by the foreign residents of Santiago as the one most likely to succeed; and a gentleman who lived eight years at Daiquiri, as manager of the Spanish-American Iron Company, and who is familiar with the topography of the whole region, writes me: "I have always thought that the great mistake of the Santiago campaign was that they assaulted the city at its most impregnable point, instead of taking possession of the heights at Aguadores, which would have been tantamount to the fall of Morro, the possession of the harbor entrance and of the harbor itself.
The place formerly selected for going into action had been again twice reconnoitered during the wait, and a better place had been found about thirty yards beyond the ford of the San Juan River. The dynamite gun had stuck in the ford of the Aguadores; a shell had got jammed in it. The Gatlings were compelled to go around it.
Three miles away to the northwest the red-and-yellow flag of Spain was blowing out fitfully in the land-breeze over the walls of the stone fort at Aguadores, and four or five miles farther to the westward, at the end of the long, terraced rampart, I could make out, with a glass, the lighthouse, the tile-roofed barracks, and the gray battlements of the old castle at the entrance to Santiago harbor.
As for the Spaniards, they began to shoot as soon as they came out of the harbor and continued to blaze away until they were utterly defeated, but they showed poor judgment and bad marksmanship. As the Americans came in closer and closer the fighting became general. The Gloucester had been lying off Aguadores, three miles east of Morro, when the Spaniards came out.
Most of the troops were in the valley of a small stream which rises on the western slope of the Sevilla watershed, runs for a short distance in the direction of Santiago, and then, after receiving a number of tributaries, turns southward, just beyond the Pozo farm-house, and falls into the sea through the notch in the rampart at Aguadores.
In view of this, I decided to begin the attack next day at El Caney with one division, while sending two divisions on the direct road to Santiago, passing by the El Pozo house, and as a diversion to direct a small force against Aguadores, from Siboney along the railroad by the sea, with a view of attracting the attention of the Spaniards in the latter direction and of preventing them from attacking our left flank.
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