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Updated: June 13, 2025
As he cautiously approached the scene of the recent bivouac he found it to be where a small stream crossed a narrow trail, and, after quenching his thirst, he followed the latter in what he believed to be the direction of Daiquiri. At any rate, it was the opposite one from that taken by his recent unwelcome neighbors.
In the second notch, about six miles from Aguadores and ten from Morro Castle, are the hamlet and railroad-station of Siboney; and in the third, five miles farther to the eastward, lies the somewhat larger and more important mining village of Daiquiri, which, before the war, was the shipping-port of the Spanish-American Iron Company.
On June 22 the advance of the invading army under Major-General Shafter landed at Daiquiri, about 15 miles east of Santiago. This was accomplished under great difficulties, but with marvelous dispatch. On June 23 the movement against Santiago was begun.
Once or twice, as a special favor, the press-boats carried him across to Siboney and Daiquiri, and he was able to write stories of what he saw there; of the landing of the army, of the wounded after the Guasimas fight, and of the fever-camp at Siboney. His friends on the press-boats sent this work home by mail on the chance that the Sunday editor might take it at space rates.
This inadequacy of transportation facilities was apparent to every one who had any knowledge of the condition of the army, and it was a subject of common talk in Siboney, in Daiquiri, on board the fleet, and in every one of our hospitals and camps.
At the time I thought this experience was going to be altogether unique, but I discovered afterward that the same thing happened in a great many other instances. Having abandoned the beef, we were forced to subsist on hard tack and tomatoes for the rest of the voyage, and hailed with joy our anchorage at Daiquiri. But we were too previous.
If officers of the navy had directed the loading of stores on the transports at Tampa, and the unloading and landing of them at Daiquiri and Siboney, there would have been a properly equipped hospital at the latter place five days sooner than there was; there would have been forty or fifty more mules in the army's pack-train; the beach would not have been strewn with the wrecks of mismanaged boats and lighters; and the transport-steamers Alamo, Breakwater, Iroquois, Vigilancia, and La Grande Duchesse would not have brought back to the United States hundreds of tons of supplies intended for, and urgently needed by, our soldiers at the front.
The U. S. transport Yale, laden with troops, arrived at Daiquiri. The President sent to Congress the following messages:
General Shafter, after inspecting the coast, decided to land in the notches occupied by the villages of Daiquiri and Siboney. He could then advance on Santiago either along the strip of beach under the rampart, by way of Aguadores and Morro Castle, or over a rough wagon-road running through the valleys and across the foot-hills of the interior, three or four miles back of the rampart.
Captain Marcotte, as a retired officer of the regular army, is better qualified than I am to express an opinion with regard to the availability of a road for military purposes, and he does not hesitate to say that the road from Daiquiri and Siboney to the front was practicable for loaded wagons up to July 18, or for a period of nearly a month subsequent to the landing of the army.
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