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Against the risk of the enemy trying to dash out of Santiago and run for some other point, provision was made by a telegram to the Yale to inform every vessel off Santiago that the Flying Squadron was off Cienfuegos, and that orders had been sent it to proceed with all possible despatch off Santiago.
Since Havana could not be uncovered, he sent instructions to Schley at first discretionary, and then, as the reports were confirmed, more imperative to blockade the eastern port. Though the commander of the Flying Squadron received the latter orders on the 23d, he had seen smoke in Cienfuegos harbor and still believed he had Cervera cornered there.
For some years after the American occupation, as before that experience, there was only a water-and-rail connection, or an all-water route, between the eastern and western sections of the island. The usual route from Havana to Santiago was by rail to Batabano or to Cienfuegos, and thence by steamer.
These various movements indicate the usefulness and the employments of the cruiser class, one of which also carried the news to Cienfuegos, another along the north coast, while a third took Sampson's telegrams from his position at sea to the cable port.
Two of our fastest despatch vessels, likewise at their best steaming immersion, were to be held at Key West ready to start at once for Cienfuegos to notify the squadron there; two, in order that if one broke down on the way, one would surely arrive within twenty-four hours.
The Department, under its growing conviction that the enemy was there, had already been increasingly disturbed by the delay of the Flying Squadron before Cienfuegos.
Cienfuegos is thereby uncovered, doubtless; but either the Spaniard fails to get there, not knowing our movements, or, if he rightly divines them and turns back, our coast is saved. Strategy is a game of wits, with many unknown quantities; as Napoleon and Nelson have said and not they alone the unforeseen and chance must always be allowed for.
This naval mishap, had it occurred, would have been due mainly to inadequate armament of our coasts; for to retain the Flying Squadron in the Chesapeake, merely as a guard to the coasting trade, would have been a serious military error, subordinating an offensive operation off Cienfuegos to one merely defensive, and not absolutely vital.
The lead color makes any object covered with it invisible in half light or a haze. There had been much speculation during the day and evening as to our probable destination, but we remained in ignorance until the next morning, when it became known that our orders were to call at the port of Cienfuegos, a prominent city of southern Cuba, some three hundred and thirty miles from Santiago.
No one believes in the integrity of the government, but, strange to say, the masses have implicit faith in the lotteries. At one corner of our hotel in Cienfuegos, there sat upon the sidewalk of the street a blind beggar, a Chinese coolie, whose miserable, poverty-stricken appearance elicited a daily trifle from the habitués of the house.
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