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Before night on the 22d, General Lawton's division, consisting of about six thousand men with a Gatling-gun battery, had landed at Daiquiri, and on the morning of the 23d it marched westward along the wagon-road to Siboney. The Spanish garrison at the latter place retreated in the direction of Santiago as General Lawton appeared, and the village fell into our hands without a struggle.
Some years ago, before there was a wagon-road between Cloverdale and Mendocino City, or Big River, as it is more commonly called up here on the northern coast, the mail was carried on horse or, more usually, on mule back; and the mail-rider was caught, on one stormy and dark night, upon the road, and found himself unable to go farther.
Toward sundown the hilly country terminates, and I descend into a broad cultivated valley, through which is a very good wagon-road; and I have the additional satisfaction of learning that it will so continue clear into Sivas, a wagon-road having been made from Sivas into this forest to enable the people to haul wood and building-timber on their arabas.
Beyond the curve which had hidden the Mexican, the wagon-road left the grade, descending abruptly upon the town. Ford looked back from the turn and saw that the other two vehicles were not yet in sight. "Shall we wait for your aunt and the others?" he asked. Her smile was a sufficient reward for the bit of tactful forethought.
Steam and stamps wrought a difference in degree the telegraph one of kind. Against eighteen hundred miles of wagon-road we set seventy-three thousand of railway; but two hundred thousand miles of telegraph are opposed by nothing, unless by Franklin's kite-string. Looked at along the perspective of poles, the old days disappear entirely the patriots become pre-historic.
The town and comfort, taste and urbanity are first; the clearing, the farm-house, the wagon-road and the improved country, second. It was far different on the frontier in Tennessee. At first a single Indian trail was the only entrance to the eastern border of it and for many years admitted only of the hunter and the pack-horse It was not till the year 1776 that a wagon was seen in Tennessee.
For two days it lasted, when we emerged into rolling country, and, along an actual wagon-road, came home to the ranch at a gallop. I know it was cruel to gallop the horses after such a long, hard journey; but we blistered our hands in vain effort to hold them in. That's the sort of horses they grow on Haleakala.
At Sabanja the wagon-road terminates, and my way becomes execrable beyond anything I ever encountered; it leads over a low mountain-pass, following the track of the ancient roadway, that on the acclivity of the mountain has been torn up and washed about, and the stone blocks scattered here and piled up there by the torrents of centuries, until it would seem to have been the sport and plaything of a hundred Kansas cyclones.
The road to the agency ran through the ravine in a southeasterly direction, following the bend of the Milk River, at a distance of five hundred yards. Milk River is a narrow, shallow stream, which here flows in a southwesterly direction, passing through a narrow canyon. Through this canyon, after making a detour to avoid some very difficult ground, the wagon-road passes for three or four miles.
The story of their journey can best be told in the words of one of the party: We had about one thousand miles to travel, and as there was no wagon-road in those early days across the plains to the mountains, we were compelled to take our chances through the vast wilderness, seeking the best route we could.
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