It was about two o'clock in the morning of the 14^th of August, (Thursday) when we began to break up our encampment in the little village of Las Pozas, to strike into the interior. Col. Haynes, after the loss of Downman, killed in battle, and Crittenden lost, was now the senior American officer. Mingled emotions possessed our minds, as we marched along under the starlight. We had, it is true, the exaltation of the brilliant victory of the previous morning; in which less than 300 raw, undisciplined and ill-armed volunteers had put to flight, with great slaughter, three times their number of the picked Spanish troops selected as Acompañias de preferencia, to strike the first blow against the Expedition. But that exultation was still, at the same time, bitterly saddened by the thought of the calamities which had already befallen us; already, at the very threshold of the bold and chivalrous enterprise. Crittenden's unaccountable conduct in his prolonged separation; the alarm about his fate, which had now become almost certainty, though we had no clue to guide us to an opinion as to its precise mode and form; the losses of the battle which we had to mourn, in the persons of comrades so noble, so dear, as so valuable to the expedition, as a Pragay, Downman, Gotay, and Oberto; the painful uncertainty in regard to the fate of the wounded whom we had to leave behind at Las Pozas, exposed to the cowardly cruelty of the Spaniards, who would promptly enter the place after our evacuation of it;--all these motives to sadness weighed heavily on the hearts probably of all of us; while some of us, whom military experience had made sufficiently aware of the indispensableness o subordination and of a spirit of obedience in all military enterprises, thought forbodingly of the bad symptoms in that respect which had been already, more than once, fatally exhibited among our men, at critical moments of service required.

Still, though thus bleeding from painful wounds, (we did not yet know how mortal one of them, Crittenden, was destined to prove to us!) We were a victorious army, and, come what might, enough had at least been done for glory. We might fail in giving liberty to Cuba, we might perish in the attempt, but the history of Las Pozas was at least ours, whether for life, or for death. We might meet the fate of all forlorn-homes, but we had established a clear demonstration by what was done in that rarely

(I do not vouch for the name) Las Cacaragicaras. We marched along in Indian file, forming, of course, a long extended line.

We had with us the six Spanish soldiers who had been take prisoner at Las Pozas; and who continued to serve with us with good will through our succeeding adventures; till the enterprise had become hopeless, and themselves worn out with fatigue. (They certainly could have easily escaped from us at any day if they had chosen to do so. When they eventually fell off from us, it was with General Lopez's consent, who told them they had better go and get back into their old companies. The mode in which they were taken prisoners indicated pretty clearly that their real object had been to desert and join us. They were a sergeant and five privates.)

We miss the object of surprising the Captain of Las Pozas, and I believe mainly from the loose fashion in which the General's order to maintain perfect silence was observed. I communicated the order to Col. Haynes, as we approached some houses, and he ordered it would be passed along the line; but this was done in such a way that, as the word rolled along through about 290 voices, a great deal more noise was produced than if no particular attempt at silence had been made. We were told that the Captain was warned of our approach by our own noise, and made hasty escape from the house where he was hiding. The General had been anxious to catch him, particularly in order that he might serve as a hostage to strengthen the chance of obtaining Christian treatment for our wounded comrades left behind at Las Pozas. We missed it, however, I have already stated that our wounded were all butchered in cold blood , as they lay side by side by the Spanish wounded, whom the General had tended as kindly as his own; Pragay and Gotay alone escaping their fate at the hands of their ferocious on their very entrance,--the former by his own poniard, the latter by his pistol. The capture of the Captain of Las Pozas by us, might, or might not, have saved them; probably not. At about nine o'clock we halted at a vega, or farm-house, being by this time very much in need of refreshment, as well as of rest. The times were soon coming when it by no means followed that because we wanted either of these we had only to halt and take it. The inmates, who were two men, a lady, and some young ladies, her daughters, and some boys, were not a little confounded on our presenting ourselves. They made, however, great demonstrations of pleasure, the ladies weeping for joy, and embracing the General. We here learned that the force of the enemy was mostly behind us; also that there had been a rising at Pinar del Rio, the principal town of the Vuelta Abajo, to the westward, and that they were anxiously waiting our coming to unite with us. After a short stay we were conducted, by the master of the house, to another farm house belonging to the same family, at no great distance, where the General halted for a few hours, and gave the men a good meal, from a couple of young oxen killed for the purpose, with plantains, corn, &c.; for which the General gave a receipt, intended to be good for a payment against the future republic. These refreshments were furnished to us with at least seeming alacrity. When Cuba shall be Cuban, that alacrity will probably be claimed to have been genuine; so long as she remains Spanish, it is likely to pass as having been simulated under the stress of circumstances:--I leave the question to their own consciences. It is certain that the men did not join our force; pleading, in excuse the domestic necessities of their situation. I have since understood that many of the Cuban revolutionists censure the General's kindness in yielding to this and other similar excuses which were from time to time made to him, by men who professed to sympathise with the cause of liberty, but had always very strong and peculiar reasons why they could not practically indulge their patriotic sentiments at that particular moment. Those who find this fault with him consider the proper policy to have been to compel all Cubans whom he met to join the liberating troops. But this fashion of impressment in the name of liberty and patriotism, was as little General Lopez's desire as it was in his system. Before our situation became desperate, he had no wish to take any others than willing volunteers for their country; the more so as he expected soon to join some insurgent forces, before doing which he could scarcely be said to have his foothold well planted on the soil. After hope was well high exhausted, it would have been entirely against his character to compromise men to no good end, with a government which would then visit them and their families with summary and ruthless vengeance. Moreover, instead of having any arms for recruits, some of our own men very soon began to drop or throw away their own muskets, which were so heavy to be carried in our long marches in this hot climate. He was no doubt right at the time, but

were I at this moment in Cuba with a liberating army, large or small, I doubt much whether I should be quite as indulgent as the good old General was in accepting such excuses, and in still kindly treating those who pleaded them.

I need scarcely say that all females were treated by the General, and by the Expedition, both on this occasion and all others, with every consideration and kindness. Wherever we happened to find them they invariably exhibited every indication of sincere sympathy and pleasure in seeing us. The Cuban women are, indeed, said to be patriots to a man. When husbands and brothers have been chary in their contributions of money, mothers, wives, sisters, and daughters have freely sent their jewels to General Lopez, to be recast into the form of muskets and ball.

At three o'clock we resumed our march, much refreshed. The General felt seriously the loss of his maps, which were among the baggage with Crittenden's unfortunate command. These maps were perfect and minute topographical ones, very serviceable for military operations. He had a pocket compass, and negro guides were readily enough furnished to us at different points, by people who rather preferred not to bear us company in person. At about dusk we again halted, after a pretty rapid march, near a little creek, at a small farm-house on a hill, and the proper arrangements were made for camping there all night; sentinels being posted, orders given, &c. (In general, I may add, however, that it was not easy to get our sentinels to stay posted .) There were several young girls about this place, who at our first appearance begun to run away, but who promptly returned on the General's call and assurances of kind treatment. They exhibited the same demonstrations of joy and attachment to the cause, as has been shown at the last vega, where we had halted in the morning. They busied themselves in preparing coffee, and whatever else the house or land afforded. All the men got a good supper of roasted corn or plantains, &c.; and whatever the girls of the family did and gave they certainly seemed to do and to give with all their warm hearts. Whether it was all genuine or not, I cannot swear. I hope it was; especially in regard to one bright-eyed little patriot in the number.

The next morning (Friday, August 15^th,) we were off before day-break, moving in the direction of Bahia Honda, but leaving that place to our left. It was after ten o'clock when we reached a beautiful cafetal, or coffee plantation, lying entirely in a valley, surround with hills, not more than four miles to the south of Bahia Honda. It was entirely deserted. After a while, however, a man was found about the premises whom I strongly suspect to have been a spy sent to watch us. He soon disappeared. The General stationed the troops in the middle of the cafetal, which was enclosed on all sides with all wall. Sentinels were placed on the top of an overhanging hill, commanding the view in the direction of Bahia Honda; others were placed to observe in both directions the road along which lay our own march. Cattle were caught and killed, fires made, and preparations were well advanced for a meal, when a countryman came in, (whom I abstain from designating more particularly--he was a true friend), and in haste asked to see the General. He had come out to let us know that the troops were in strong force in Bahia Honda, consisting of 1,200 in infantry, 200 cavalry, and artillery; that they knew of our being at this cafetal, and were about to set out at twelve o'clock (it was already past that hour) to take possession of the road which constituted our route to the mountains, so as to head us off in that direction; intending then to attack us in the evening, in concert with another strong division which by that time would make its appearance in our rear. The General immediately held a short consultation with his staff, and afterwards with the other officers and announced the necessity of instantly decamping. The road from Bahia Honda to the cafetal where we were, was not a direct one, but entered the road along which lay our route, at a considerable distance beyond where we were; and it was essential that we should get passed that point before the troops should occupy it. Should they get before us, it would become necessary to attempt to force the position; an operation of somewhat doubtful result, with our little band against such overwhelming numbers, defensively posted with artillery and cavalry, and with another column soon expected to be pressing up on our rear.

It was rather a hard necessity thus to have to quit the preparation already half complete for our meal, but there was no help for it. The order was given, and the men were mustered for marching. Before starting, the General took the opportunity to say a few words to the officers assembled together. He told them that he looked to each of them to set an example to the men in the cheerful endurance of fatigue and hardship. He believed it would not be long before they would united with the insurgent parties of the Cubans, and acquire such force as to be able to take up positions in which all their wants would be supplied. Before long, too, he expected (see page 566) that reinforcements would also come from the United States; and that they would be enabled to assume the offensive, instead of having now to avoid present engagements with superior forces of the enemy. In the meantime, resolution, patience and endurance were the qualities demanded of all., and he hoped that none would fail in exhibiting them. He went on further to say, that he saw with pain that they were not strict enough with their men in the enforcing order, and in exacting obedience and the performance of duty from them. Many were neglectful of that most important duty, on which depended the safety of all, themselves as well as their comrades, namely, that of remaining steady at the posts assigned to them as sentinels and piquets. Some of them, too, threw away, not alone their blankets and jackets, but their ammunition and their muskets. We were already fifteen or twenty muskets short in our little band. The continuance of this would leave soon leave us without any means of defending ourselves, or being useful to the cause we had come to aid. All had been told and urged to keep compactly together, and yet several had already been lost by neglect of this order, and by dropping behind; to fall inevitably into the hands of a cruel enemy, who spared nobody, armed or unarmed. If all this was persisted in, it must be the certain ruin of us all. He repeated very urgently the necessity of strict obedience and subordination, the want of which had already produced serious evils, deeply comprising the common cause as well as the safety of every individual. From all quarters he was met with promises that all should be as he said; but inexperienced officers have usually but little power over undisciplined and irregular troops, especially in such an exception situation as our was. Perhaps no possible officers could have acquired much power over them, within so short a time, and under such circumstances. Certain it is, that I cannot say I saw any perceptible change, in spite of all the General's exhortations, and of all the good resolutions and promises elicited by them.

It was near one o'clock when we started from the cafetal, with of course a very hurried march; with a negro guide furnished by the friend who had brought us this timely warning. The heat was severe, and not a few were the muskets I again saw lying thrown away in the road that morning. Before this day was over, we were minus full fifty! Of course, men without their arms were worse than merely useless to us. It was a sad thing to see men thus rushing upon certain ruin, and dragging their comrades with them. Remonstrances or commands were alike vain, with a

portion of our men. This was all bitter enough to be borne by the old General, but he invariably made the best of everything. All he now wanted was to find some embodied force of patriot insurgents, according to the representation which had been made to him in the United States of what was already begun, and especially of what was only awaiting his coming to begin. Once at the head of such a body, with his American volunteers as an auxiliary corps, and with their spirits revived, tone renewed, and with subordination restored, or rather created, by the more imposing organization he would then be enabled to give to an enlarged and respectable force, matters would then assume a different aspect.

Forcing the march, we reached the point it was so necessary for us to reach before being headed off by the enemy from Bahia Honda; and that corps at was now in our rear. Before doing so, we passed another cafetal on the left. We were met by another friendly peasant, who had just ridden out from Bahia Honda, and who informed us that there had been a general alarm and muster among the troops just before he had made his way out of the place. More he could not tell. We very soon now struck into the mountains, by a small foot-path to the right, which wound through them, gradually ascending to a very great height. Now we waded a mountain torrent, now crept through a rocky ravine or gully, now marched over ground on which it was almost impossible for the men to follow, all under the lead of our honest negro guide furnished by our good friend of the morning. The night was well advanced,--it was probably eleven o'clock,--after a march of incredible fatigue, when we reached a little farm-house at the top of the mountain. How it was effected I hardly know; I really do not think I should have attempted it by daylight. I should have regarded it as impossible. It was the most shocking march for the troops that I had ever witnessed, or ever heard of. We had taken it, moreover, on very empty stomachs. It will be remembered that our meal for the day was just about half prepared at the cafetal, when the alarm was brought out to us from Bahia Honda, which had compelled us to decamp so precipitately, to avoid being hemmed in between two overpowering columns of the enemy.

At the little house we found on the top of this mountain, which was near some San Diego (San Diego de something or other--there are several San Diegos in this region), we met two friends from Havana, who had come out to join us. One of them was a gentleman named Julian Chassen; the name of the other I do not remember. The risings in the neighborhood of Principe and Trinidad had been entirely put down before our arrival. Full five thousand troops had come out from Havana against us, and now, together with those before stationed about the country, were around us in all directions. These two had formed part of a considerable band of the youth of Havana, who had made an appointment to meet in the mountains to join us; they alone had come to the rendezvous, making their way to it with no small difficulty. They had waited at this spot for their comrades; none others had arrived. Whether any had shrunk discouraged from the engagement, or had found it impossible to reach the place, in consequence of the vigilance of the troops, of the ronda, and of the mounted parties of Spaniards under the various tenientes and capitanes de partido,--pressing everybody into service, stopping all travel, and shooting down without scruple any suspicious person,--is not now known. They had been intending to go on cautiously in the morning in the direction of Bahia Honda, to endeavor to learn where they might have a chance of falling in with us, when they were agreeably surprised by the sound of our approach. They at the same time confirmed the report of a rising at Pinar del Rio.

The necessary guards for safety were posted, and a few hours of much needed rest were given to the troops, who threw themselves down under the trees, or under the open sky, glad of a stone for a pillow. There had not been a mouthful to eat that day; not a mouthful was to be found here. The men were in very discontented, murmuring humor. Some of the officers, I am sorry to say, did not much improve matter in this respect. Without meaning to discriminate unfavorably against any whom I do not mention by name, I yet must give myself the pleasure of recording the excellent conduct of two in particular, Col. Haynes and Capt. Ellis, who set all of us admirable examples of cheerfulness, endurance, and ready obedience to every order and wish of the General.

The night passed quietly, weariness softening the soft pillows, and sleep supplying the place of supper. Nothing worthy of note occurred, except perhaps that the patrols sent out to visit the posts generally brought back, as usual, the report that no sentinels were to be found where they had been stationed.

Early in the morning (16^th, August, Saturday), we moved on, getting deeper into the mountains, marching up and down steep ascents and descents, over ground extremely rough, tangled, and fatiguing. At about ten or eleven o'clock, we came to a plantation called Santa Maria, the proprietor of which General Lopez recognized, having known him seventeen years before. He resolved to halt here for a few hours, and then resume his march at about four in the afternoon. Constant motion was the present policy of our situation, so as to baffle the efforts of the troops to attack us with their superior forces, until we should be strengthened. The necessary orders for camping were given, and all possible precautions taken against a surprise; and little time was lost in preparing for a good meal , by men who were now nearly forty-eight hours with fatigue for their only food. A couple of cattle were killed, plantains and corn were gathered (a receipt being given for them by the General as before); the provisions were distributed and soon cooked, and a good hearty meal presently put a much better aspect on the general condition of human affairs. A peasant here joined us, in spite of the discouraging situation in which we certainly seemed to be, and indeed were; and he not only confirmed the report of an insurrection in Pinar del Rio, but told us that the people of San Cristoval, a town on the skirt of the plains on the other side of the mountains, were ready to rise. The General determined then to move in that direction, to ascertain the disposition of the people and the force of troops in that neighborhood, and to act according to circumstances. The few hours at Santa Maria were spent by the General and myself in heavy sleep, neither of us having closed an eye for the forty-eight hours previous.

At four o'clock we resumed our march passing through a country of magnificent beauty and picturesqneness. It may be called a sea of hills and valleys, succeeding each other in quick waves, the former often conical and regular as well as steep, the whole covered with luxuriant tropical vegetation. We pursued a road towards San Cristoval. At about four or five miles from the plantation we came to a place where the road divided, going on in the one direction towards San Cristoval and the other towards Bahia Honda. A small body of horsemen was posted here, exhibiting some purpose of attacking us. The General rode forward toward them, intending to speak to threat, but they soon disappeared. About half an hour afterwards, however, they returned, and made some small hostile demonstrations at a distance, altogether beyond aim. A few scattered shots were fired towards them, which brought two of them from their saddles. But it was evident that fright had more to do with their fall than the bullets, since they presently picked themselves up and ran off after their flying companions, with wonder alacrity for dead men.

From a small farm-house near this spot, the General procured some aguardiente, a sort of cane brandy, which he distributed to the men himself, all filing before him. He had done the same before, by the way, at Las Pozas, after the battle. I see the good and gallant old man now, as he stood pouring out and handing a moderate measure to each as they passed, with his soldiery form, his fiery but gentle eye, is heavy gray beard and moustaches, giving to all, now a shake of the hand, now a friendly tap on the shoulder, now an encouraging smile or nod, with occasionally such a word of cheer as his little English (which was next to none at all) enabled him to use. God bless his noble memory, now and ever more!

As this was a commanding position, the fork of the road being on the top of a small hill, where an attack from a force of only reasonable superiority would not have been unwelcome, the General determined to pass the night there, first having sent forward Col. Blumenthal to reconnoitre the road towards San Cristoval. After riding some miles in that direction, the Colonel reported no signs of troops in that quarter. The night passed without alarm, and early the next morning (August 17^th, Sunday), we moved forward again in the direction of San Cristoval. It was known that this road would lead us past the coffee-estate, or Cafetal de Frias, which belonged to the General's family in Cuba. Here we expected to halt for a good meal and comfortable refreshment, for which it would afford ample materials. Our number here was about 260 men, but less than 200 muskets. Since leaving Las Pozas, we had lost between 200 and 30 men, from their dropping behind or straying from the places at which we had stopped. We had lost from 60 to 70 muskets besides, in the manner I have before explained. That men so situated should throw away their muskets! For all usefulness to us, the men might as well have remained with the muskets. Possibly for some the motive may have been , that they imagined a better change of safety to consist in being found without arms in their hands, than as armed members of the Expedition.

We reached the Cafetal de Frias at about noon. This was destined to be the scene of a second engagement, in which I am strongly inclined to believe that we a second time held the fate of Cuba in our hands, if we could but have stretched them forth to grasp it!

The Cafetal de Frias is a spacious and handsome coffee-estate, covering many acres, enclosed on three sides within an outside wall, the fourth side resting on a close, tangled, and almost impassible wood. A vast oblong is thus formed. Near one of the longer sides of this quadrangle are the house and other buildings, enclosed, together with a large garden, within another inner wall. Just beyond the outer wall, on that side, passes the road, with elevated ground sloping up beyond it. On the same side of the quadrangle on which the house is situated, are two wide entrances, one at each end; and an inside road goes round from the one to the other, passing round the garden and the buildings, outside of the inner wall which encloses the garden, but of course with the main quadrangle. On the other side of the general quadrangle, between this road and the opposite side of the cafetal, were two small hills, the smaller one nearer to the garden, the larger one not for from the opposite wall, about three or four hundred yards from the house. On the later hill was a grove of some fifteen or twenty mango and other trees.

The men were stationed on the latter hill under the trees, with the exception of two companies on the smaller one, from which were to be detailed the sentinels and piquets. These were posted at the various proper points. After making all the necessary dispositions, I joined the General in the house, and reported all to him, to his satisfaction. No time was lost in preparing for a meal. It was now about two o'clock. The men were cooking. The General and I were alone. Or almost alone, in the house. Our horses were fastened outside, the General's at a gate on the side, mine in front. The General was at home again, after many years' absence! Presently a sentinel at the house gave the alarm of the approach of some horsemen; then quickly a second gave a similar announcement from a different direction, and I myself observed two Spanish horsemen about twenty paces in front of the house, at the gate of a small enclosure there. The General quickly left the house, first on foot till he could mount his horse, and then riding rapidly towards our men on the hill above mentioned. The sentinels retired pretty precipitately in the same direction. No alarm had been given but by those immediately close to the house. My horse was in front of the house. I had to untie him within full view of my two unwelcome friends there, who were Spanish carbineers; my sword being my only weapon. They allowed me, however, to do it without molestation, and I rode off unharmed, though they were close to me, and could have shot me down as easily as pull a trigger. I believe they were deserters who wanted to join us, because two, whom I believe to have been the same individuals, afterwards did manage to get round to the rear of our position, where they surrendered themselves readily and joined us. At any rate, whether right or wrong in this presumption, certain it is that, whatever were their motives, they treated me with a respectful consideration, when my life was not worth a pin's fee, for which I return them my most cordial thanks. They might as easily as not, have saved the reader the infliction of this Narrative. Whether is a grateful to them as the writer, I will not inquire to closely. I rode off at full speed to our camp, right glad to get off so well, and observing now around me masses of the enemy approaching.

Thus we were a second time interrupted at that moment the most interesting to us of the day, that of cooking! The enemy was upon us in force, under General Enna, their commander-in-chief, and the military second-in-command of the Island--though this circumstance was not yet known to us. Enna had probably expected us to stop at the Cafetal de Frias, where he thought he would have us secured in a trap. His infantry was entering by the broad opening or gate on the left

(As our position on the hill was no situated); his cavalry (which had followed our march) was entering by the one at the opposite end of the same side of the quadrangle. He had some howitzers (four, if memory is not in error) posted on the other side of the main road beyond that wall of the cafetal, on the rising ground which I have already mentioned. His force was 120 cavalry, and 1200 infantry, besides this artillery. It is clear that he expected to catch us in and about the house and adjacent buildings of the cafetal, in a position just under his howitzers; and, by entering by the two gates, the road between which swept round through the main quadrangle and outside of the garden wall, he no doubt thought to get upon our rear, and have us there completely encircled within his arms. He did in fact (owing to the incorrigible remissness of our sentinels) come very near succeeding in thus catching one great prize, the General, and one very insignificant et-cetera attached to his persons in the capacity of aide-de-camp. But, fortunately and prudently, our men had been stationed under the Mango trees on the hill above mentioned, to which all the outposts then promptly fell back. Enna's artillery thus had no play upon us, the buildings intervening between it and us; and when his cavalry and infantry came into the great quadrangle, the road by which they entered from the opposite gates, instead of bringing them upon us from the rear, only brought them before the good position on which we now stood quickly ready for them.

General Enna was himself with the cavalry which entered first by the entrance on the right. He certainly then acted with very little judgment or generalship. Whether it was that he trusted more to his cavalry than to his infantry, or that he was carried away with rage at his former defeat at Las Pozas, and by an impetuous confidence in his ability to sweep us to destruction by charges of the former description of troops, and further, perhaps, by anxiety to get at us before we could fall back under cover of the woods which were near at hand,--whatever his motive may have been, certainly the unfortunately Enna acted much more the part of a brave individual soldier than that of a skillful leader. Instead of attacking us with his infantry, aided by the cavalry, he undertook to charge up to us with the latter, before bringing the former into action at all. At first charge was repulsed by the same deadly musketry he had before experienced at Las Pozas. He then, indignant at the cowardice of his men, (who had broken and fallen back before getting at all near us,) formed his horsemen into two attacking columns, to charge us, one on the right and the other on the left; though the men did not seem to exhibit much stomach for the business. We had not two hundred muskets, but they worked well. Horses and men strewed the ground before and below us. Enna himself fell, mortally wounded. Both division of the cavalry broke and fled in panic, and it was not without great difficulty that Enna's aides could gather and hold together some fifteen or twenty to carry off the fallen General. Of course, we did not then, on our side, know who he was, though we saw that an active officer of some importance had fallen. Enna's own cavalry did the rest of the business for us. They fled, in complete panic, along the first outlet open to them, which was the road that was the continuation of that which they had entered by, and along which the columns of infantry were then entering the quadrangle from the opposite direction. This charge of theirs cut into their own infantry, and went on trampling and scattering the portion of it which was entering by the same passage by which the calvary was escaping. Total panic and rout was the result. The cavalry escaped chiefly by that outlet, a few galloping back the other way. The portion of the infantry already within the quadrangle made their escape, some that way, returning in their steps, but most of them pressing along the road which led round the garden wall, to get out by the only other outlet. They thus had to pass round under our fire, crowding along as they went, and returning us not much more than some harmless scattering shots as they passed. Our fire was rather distant, but not ineffectual.

Oh that we had but had fifty horses, and willing riders, to pursue then with! Oh that, without horses, our own men could but have been made to pursue! General Lopez, who was in front, with so much exposure as to cause me to remonstrate with him, advanced to lead the men in pursuit; but few followed. The attempt was evidently ineffectual and hopeless. We had but to rush down upon them, and the abandoned howitzers were ours! Who knows how many of the enemy would have laid down their arms, then to have assuredly joined us? Pursuit would have consummated a victory which would have been perhaps decisive, if it had been possible to follow it up, at a moment when moral effect was everything. Enna fallen, the artillery captured, cavalry and infantry scattered, panic stricken, before us, to the right and left, all the fatal effect before produced by the capture and massacre of Crittenden's men would have been counteracted and compensated. Many of the country people, now overawed by the masses of troops, and by our apparent disasters and seeming fugitive character, would have been encouraged and enabled to rise and join us. Creoles who were now by impressment among the bands of the enemy, ready to join Lopez at the first chance of reasonable prospect in doing so, (not a few of whom, as I have since learned, had even adopted that mode of getting into his vicinity for the purpose of doing so,) would have been released from the coercion and fear which forced them to dissemble their real desires and intentions, and would have been free to avow themselves; after which, all such would have had to fight with desperation. Desertion from the troops, too, would have been in all probability rapid and abundant, since many of Lopez's old soldiers would have been glad to come over to his side, to fight under, instead of against, his old invincible lead; especially when they would then have with them, instead of against them, those deadly Yankee "patent rifles" (as they supposed our old muskets to be) which had already produced such irresistible panic among them.

The General felt bitterly enraged at the forfeiture of a second opportunity so brilliant as this was; a loss proceeding from that one fatal cause which had been already the source of so much evil to us, the insubordination and (in the military sense) the demoralization of our men. But, though his feelings were not disguised from his confidants, he was not a liberty to exhibit them.⁽¹⁾ He could do nothing more than resume his system of rapidly moving about, to avoid encounters with the enemy, till he should receive reinforcements. The Spanish troops, this again repulsed, would of course soon recover from their panic when they found themselves not pursued, and would son be back in increased force, with which they would bring their artillery into play. Nothing remained to be done but immediately evacuate the position; which he did, profiting by his knowledge of the ground, by disappearing through the thick and tangled wood on the left, which I mentioned above as forming one of the boundaries of the cafetal.

Such was the battle of Frias, in which the disparity of force was even greater than at Las Pozas. Sharp musketry and firmness of position on our side; ready and quick panic and bad generalship on the side of the enemy; there was the whole of it. His infantry never attacked us, and his cavalry did so but feebly, and soon fled in wild rout, trampling and spreading the panic through their own advancing columns of infantry. General flight right and left followed, in which they suffered considerably, not from any pursuit of ours, but because their outlet of escape carried them under and within reach of our flanking fire. Their loss was large, though what it exactly was I cannot say. Their dead strewed pretty thickly the soil of Lopez's old estate. It would seem incredible, but for the peculiar manner in which this battle was fought, as I have thus related it; but the fact is, that we sustained no other loss than three wounded, and, of those three, one was wounded only through the carelessness of a comrade. This single fact sufficiently proves the panic dread with which our fire was regarded by the Spanish soldiers. In connexion with the battle of Las Pozas, I have already mentioned that they had the conviction that we had brought with us some novel and peculiarly destructive Yankee invention of arms and ammunition. Old flint muskets, and their own cartridges, gathered on the 13^th from the field of Las Pozas, did all the business at Frias on the 17^th. However, the greater part of the business was in truth done by their own panic, which was beyond control after the fall of General Enna.

General Rosales, Enna's second-in-command, was afterwards, I understand, threatened with court-martial for cowardice in not having rallied the troops and renewed the attack after Enna's fall; but he justified himself by referring to the hospital, where most of the wounds, of officers and all, were in the back.

I have said that we disappeared through the thick and tangled wood which was on the left of our position. This was at about two o'clock, and by a narrow path along which we were conducted by a guide taken by the General from the cafetal. We thus made, ourselves, a precipitate retreat from the field of our own victory, before the smoke of the musketry by which we had won it had well cleared off. From a field of triumph, in which a handful of men had scattered to the right and left an army with artillery, in utter panic rout and flight, General Lopez thus retired, with a deeper gloom in his heart than he had known at any former hour if our adventures. He kept up, however, a cheerful and cheering countenance. Our direction was still towards San Cristoval, to try the effect of our presence in calling out the rising of the people in that quarter, for which so much disposition was reported to exist. After marching, through a winding footpath in the woods, about six miles, we came to an alley of mango trees, where we halted for a short rest, and then resumed the march , till, about six in the afternoon, we reached another cafetal, (still in the mountains, but near their edge, before the descent to the plains on the south-east), where the General resolved to camp for the night. A couple of cattle were slaughtered, and we made up in supper for the dinner at which General Enna (in evil hour for himself!) had interrupted us and spoiled our cooking, at Frias.

We here encountered this night for the first time the enemy to whose direct agency our ultimate destruction, as a military force, is largely ascribable--the Rain. It rained nearly all night; and though we had shelter afforded by the buildings of the cafetal, yet we spent an unpleasant night enough. In the morning (August 18^th, Monday,) we moved on in the direction of San Cristoval, from which we were now at no great distance. The General determined on the bold proceeding of going on in advance of the men, to try the effect of his personal appearance among the inhabitants, without the alarm which might be first caused among them by the sudden presence of the Expedition. Besides, the appearance of our little army was not of the most imposing or attractive kind, after all our marches and wanderings over the rocky roads and paths of the mountains. Many a foot was not only shoeless, but bruised and swollen; and it is likely enough that the bullet that laid low the haughty and superb Enna, had been aimed by some "Yankee" in shirt sleeves, and breeches seriously damaged.

Leaving the men, therefore, under the command of that fine old veteran, Col. Blumenthal, his first Aide, to follow slowly after us, the General rode forward, accompanied by myself and four men, towards San Cristoval. The road, descending irregularly to the plain, was here exceedingly bad, up and down, rocky, broken, and at times scarcely passable. We went on some six or eight miles, and reached the plain to the eastward of San Cristoval, which was five or six miles distant, on the other side of a river. We came across a number of farm-houses, at which we were always heartily received, with every seeming of kindness, though the inmates exhibited the greatest fear lest the knowledge of it should reach the authorities. They told us that in the west Pinar del Rio was said to be still in insurrection, but that here it was impossible for them to rise, not only for the want of arms, but also from the heavy pressure of the troops in the vicinity. We learned form them that there were near two thousand troops in and about San Cristoval; from which the General concluded that it was most prudent not to approach the village, but to return (carrying with us a couple of cattle.) and endeavor to pass around to the north of San Cristoval, so as to get into the road towards Pinar del Rio to the westward.

One severe loss sustained in that of the baggage left with Crittenden, was that of all the printed proclamations which the General had brought with him, addressed to the people of the Island, to the Spaniards, and to his old soldiers of the army. There would have been no great difficulty in regard to their circulation about the country. They might have been useful. As it was, the authorities had full swing to spread the most lying accounts of our purposes and actions, representing us as a lawless, piratical banditti, marking our way with blood, rapine, and every manner of outrage. In point of fact, neither man nor woman on the soil of Cuba (aside from our warfare with the government) had a single occasion for complaint against us. And, fatally insubordinate as our men were, in reference to military manageableness, yet from highest to lowest, throughout our little army, reigned a degree of self-respect and decency which effectually prevented it from running into license in regard to either property or person. In this respect the General's injunctions were very stringent, and they were obeyed with entire fidelity. I have since heard, from a neutral stranger who travelled in that region not long afterwards, that the country people said that they were far better treated by the Expeditionaries than by the Spaniards.

Returning from our unsatisfactory reconnoisance, we met the Expedition resting in a corn-field on the slope of the mountains. All were little pleased with the necessity of retracing our steps. Another further shower still dampened our spirits, as well as wet our bodies and our powder. Pushing back into the mountains by the same route we had come by, at an advanced hour in the evening we arrived at the cafetal of Candelaria.

On a muster and inspection of the troops we had the mortification of finding that more than half were now without arms; and of those who retained their muskets some were without ammunition. Not more than about 90 muskets were left; and of these some ten or fifteen were without ammunition. Many of them were also in pretty bad condition from the rain.⁽²⁾

The proprietor of the Candelaria cafetal was at home, and received us with the respect due to the stronger party;--though I strongly suspect he was no better than a knave. All the people of the region we under orders, with penalty of death, to give information of our movements to the nearest column of troops; and I am mistaken if this worthy gentleman did not do that thing.

The best precautions in our power were taken to guard against surprise. I will not name the company which did the duty of sentinels and outposts that night, but I will say that twice in that night I had the sad experience of finding that they were deserted shortly after I had gone the round of visiting them.

At about half-past ten o'clock, the proprietor besought the General to allow him to leave the cafetal, to attend some necessary business for which he was expected by his brother, in a neighboring plantation; a permission which I think the too trusting General was somewhat imprudent in granting. He returned about an hour after daybreak the next morning, (August 19^th, Tuesday,) just as we were getting ready to resume our march. The cafetal was just on the slope on the hill; behind us was a rocky mountain; in front a garden and below, and below that a cornfield, terraced after a fashion on a pretty steep slope. A sort of road passed to the right and the left in front. Behind there was no retreat, no opening into the tangled and seemly impervious wood of the utterly savage mountain. A little to the left, however, and below us, a rocky ravine or chasm between two hills made its wild way further into the heart of the mountains, being the bed of a creek, or rather torrent.

Suddenly, as we were forming, came whistling some bullets from the cover of the cornfield, just below us. Behold, a column of Spanish infantry was there. We formed hastily for defence, and, crippled as we were in guns, would probably have been easily able to repel this attack from the front, but both to the right and the left were to be seen other columns occupying those only outlets from our position, and advancing upon us. Resistance under those circumstances, with our trifling number of effective muskets, was out of the question, and poor Lopez had to fly before his enemy for the first time in his life. After having twice beaten that enemy, and had so many proofs of their cowardice, this was a bitter necessity. He instantly resolved to improvise a path through the woods and bushes which divided us from the ravine I have mentioned as lying below us on the left; and gathering the men together, he began himself to cut an opening, plying, with all the vigor of his usually muscular arm, a heavy knife or machete, to clear a passage; along which, after knocking over a few of the enemy with our serviceable muskets, the men followed him. Colonel Elizalde was the name of the officer (as I have since learned,) who commanded the corps before which we thus had to retire, and great Spanish credit and glory were awarded him, for what passed for his victory over us, and our dispersion. If we had been in a situation to fight, that is to say, if most of our guns had not been thrown away, and most of what remained rendered of little use by the rain, we should undoubtedly have accepted an engagement in the good position we were occupied, in spite of the very great disparity of number; and I know no reason why Candelaria should have told the same tale as Las Pozas and Frias had done before. As it was, what we did was the only possible alternative; and the Spaniards must have been indeed astonished when they saw us suddenly vanishing out of a position where escape seemed impossible, by a path along which they dared not follow, since it was only practicable for one person at a time, and not easily at that. Moreover, it was already raining, and the storm went on fast increasing in severity.

A terrible time we then had of it! I brought up the rear, and was the last one that passed through. In getting along I was much impeded and delayed by my desire to save my horse, a fine, spirited, and enduring animal; a grey, one of those which I before mention, as having been found by us, ready equipped for mounting, and apparently left for our use, very near the shore where we landed at Morrilo, on the morning of the 12^th,--just one week ago. One week and so much with that little period of time! The passage was greatly entangled with a species of parasite creeper, which grows in great abundance, with few leaves, but with long tough strings of stems, weaving huge webs across between the ground and the trees and the bushes. Catching me by the neck, it sometimes seemed to threaten to hang me, in punishment for this intrusion, into the solitude of a wild domain of tropical nature never before probably broken by human step. I frequently had to dismount. By the time I got to the creek, none of my comrades were in sight. I followed along up its channel, no catching a difficult foothold from rock to rock, generally knee-deep in the water, at other times coming suddenly on a neck-deep hole; and after struggling on a short time heard two or three voices ahead. Col. Blumenthal was the first one I overtook. I should have said that a few occasional shots followed us, but I neither saw those who fired them, nor either felt or saw anything of their bullets. The old Colonel was just turning off from the bed of the creek to strike into and up the mountain on the right. I asked him, 'where he was going,' he answered, 'that they must have gone up that way.' 'No,' was my opinion, but he adhered to his, and turned off out of the line of the creek. Thus was the old Colonel lost.⁽³⁾ I never saw him again till I had the great pleasure of meeting him in New York. Meanwhile, I had lost all further sounds ahead; but pushing and floundering eagerly along, I soon overtook a couple of the boys. For some little distance they helped me along with my horse, I leading and dragging him by the head, and they pushing him forward from behind over difficult places, with sticks and their hands. At last a few further hints of shots behind us from above, made them unwilling thus to retard their own progress, and they pushed on for themselves--small blame to them. I stuck a while longer to my faithful and useful companion of the past week, sorely reluctant to abandon him. He was by this time bloody from numerous bruises on the rocks. At last, in a place of pretty deep water, he missed all footing, and turned over on his side, and my efforts to get him up again were all in vain. We now had to part company, and a sorrowful parting it was on my side. I first loosened his girth to relieve him from the saddle, and the good knight Fitz-James, among the mountains where he was lost, certainly had not half as much reason for his lament,--

"Wo worthy the chase, wo worth the day,

That cost thy life, my gallant grey!"

However, my good grey escaped a worse fate, by his inability to keep up any further with us. Possibly he may have been devoured by birds or beasts as he lay; but most infallibly, if he had gone on a few days longer as a member of the Expedition, he would have been devoured by us. I hope, however, that a happier fortune remained behind him, for he well deserved it. I trust he may have after a while gathered himself up, and may now be cropping the herbage of the Cuzco mountains, and kicking a pair of vigorous heels at any Spaniard who may approach him--one of the very few free things in the Island of Cuba. Besides other motives for my natural regret at losing him, I had hoped to carry him through for the General, having no idea that any other horse could possibly have been got over the same ground. It proved afterwards, that Pedro Manuel Lopez, the General's gallant young nephew, had in fact got the General's own horse along, which, not having had aide-de-camp duty to do, was not so much worn out as mine. How it was done I cannot imagine. The fact, however, I can vouch for; for I afterwards helped eat him.

About a quarter of an hour afterwards I overtook the main body of my own comrades, when they were just about striking out from the creek into the mountain. Asking for the General, I was told he was at the head, still opening the pathway through for the rest to follow. At last I reached him. He had thought me lost, and I was touched with his gratification at seeing me. Pedro, his mulatto boy, (a true, bright, cheerful and devoted lad, who had been his servant in the United States, to which country he had accompanied him in 1848, from Cuba, and who had done his duty with a musket in the Cuban company), told me that he had repeatedly, in the midst of all the struggles and difficulties of that terrible retreat, expressed regrets and anxieties for my fate. All seemed saved again, now that I rejoined the General.

Our position was now a dreadful one indeed. The mountain where we were was indeed inaccessible to any enemy, but it proved to be utterly destitute of anything foe sustenance. The storm kept on till it became fairly a hurricane. The rain seemed a concentration of forty days of deluge into two. The trees were tossing wildly as they were lashed by the fury of the tropical storm, and crashing in all directions around. No pen could do justice to our suffering through the terrible days that now ensued, and their more awful nights, in this savage mountain region. The cold, during the nights, was intense. We had no shelter, and but little clothing against it. The only slight degree of comfort from it we could get, was from standing huddled closely together, like sheep in a storm. The General had no other clothing than white linen; and who can ever imagine all the thoughts that filled is noble and manly heart, through those long hours in which I stood, for much of the time, pressed up against his breast for mutual warmth. Under foot the rain poured over the rough slope in miniature torrents. None could lie down; some sat on stomps or stones, but most of us stood as I have described. We wandered about by day, but still found nothing edible in the savage and untrodden waste of that dreadful mountain; not even fruits or palms. Exhausted by hunger, cold, wet, want of sleep, and for most of us lost of hope, stiff in every limb, and for the most part with bear, bleeding and swollen feet, there was our condition, while we had to wait the subsiding of that never to be forgotten hurricane in the mountain!

On the 21^st, Thursday, (the morning of the 19^th was the date of our entrance into this mountain, and the commencement of the storm in its severity,) there was an intermission of the rain, and the General ordered his horse to be killed, and a fire was made after long and patient efforts, by scraping together as much dry powder as could be found, pieces of paper, stocks of useless and broken muskets, old wood, etc. The horse was tolerably roasted, and about one hundred and sixty men, on their fourth day of total abstinence, made a meal of him, with some reservation, by some, of a homeopathic ration for the next day. On the following night the rain recommenced, but not with the same fury as before. We had by this time also acquired a sort of amphibious nature, and were comparatively accustom to it.

But throughout all these extremities of hardship and suffering, it was wonderful to see the indomitable endurance and force, both physical and moral, of the old General. Nothing seemed capable of conquering his great heart and strong frame. Nothing could break him down. Throughout all, he still kept up and encouraging countenance and words, and went on at the heard of the forlorn line of tottering stragglers that we were, with his machete or knife in his hand, cutting away one small tree or shrub after another, and winding himself through, to facilitate the march of his followers. To endure, to wait, to persevere, hoping to find cattle in the mountains, till relief should come, from the people of the Island, and reinforcing expeditions from the United States,⁽⁴⁾ making diversions to our benefit, and encouraging the Creoles to a general rising,--and meanwhile to work a way round westward toward Pinar del Rio, where he expected to find a strong insurrection on foot, both by reason of the pledges made to him before his coming to the Island, and of numerous reports given to us from that quarter,--this is what he now clung to, and what he strove to keep us in heart to struggle on to do. But still there can be no doubt that at bottom he was now himself very much dispirited and disappointed. We did not know yet of the Atares massacre. If we had, it would have thrown much light on the state of affairs. The General greatly regretted Colonel Blumenthal, whom he held in much esteem as a worthy and honorable gentleman, and as a brave and good veteran soldier. He presumed him to have fallen in the hands of the Spaniards and then to have been shot and hacked down like a dog, as had undoubtedly been the fate of the other of our number who had at any time dropped off from the main body, in the course of our devious wanderings.

On the 22d (Friday), the day after the feast of horse-flesh, matters were made even a shade worse by a sort of mutiny among the man and some of the officers, who came to the General, and telling him that their hardships could not be endured any longer, and that the people did not rise, and no bodies of patriots were found in arms, called on him to take them back to the United States. This demand, under the circumstances, was certainly not entirely unlike that of the sea-sick lady who, in the midst of the ocean, insisted that the captain should put her ashore immediately. What they required was that he should abandon the enterprise, and lead them down into the plains and to the coast, where they could find some small vessel in which they might embark for escape. Some of the other officers, especially Haynes, Ellis, Johnson and others, came to him with a different tone and attitude, and asked, in the way becoming him as well as themselves, what further expectations or plans he had; depicting the condition and temper of the men, and the impossibility of their holding out much longer against the extremities of the situation.

In reference to means of defence, among about forty muskets remaining in the whole Expedition, there were scare ten capable of going off, and very few, if any, cartridges dry enough to serve those ten.

The General told them, in reply, that no one could feel so deeply grieved as he was to see them reduced to this forlorn state; and the more so because it was not the enemy that had done it, or been able to do it, but themselves. In our two engagements (the few shots fired at Candelaria were not to be called a third one) we had won brilliant victories, and had not lest forty men. Where were the hundred and twenty or thirty of our people who, for want of obedience and care, had strayed off, or been left or dropped behind, to fall certain victims to the ferocity of a foe, cruel in proportion to his cowardice before them in the field? Where were the arms of ammunition of the men now here, which had been recklessly thrown away to lighten fatigue, or in some cases perhaps for even worse reason, and the loss of which had so reduced our means of resistance as to have forced us to fly into these inhospitable wilds, from before an enemy whom otherwise we could have defeated as easily as we had defeated the same troops, or their comrades, twice before? Why had we lost the easy fruits of our victories, from simple want of the necessary military subordination and obedience? But reduced as we were, he still hoped to be able to make head against the enemy. The time could not be far when reinforcements must arrive from the United States, and he still expected to united with friendly bands of the people of the Island in insurrection, according to the assurances he had received at Key West, from a perfectly trusty agent whom he had sent over to prepare the organization of the Vuelta Abajo for rising on his coming. To satisfy them, however, he would on the next day descend again to the plains, (though contrary to his own wishes,) get there a stock of provisions, and return to the mountains, where he was indeed disappointed in not having yet found any, but where the enemy would not dare to attack them. If, after that, no change should take place in their situation within ten days, he would then release all from any obligation or plege to remain with him any longer to share his fate, and they might make the best attempt that the situation permitted to get back to the United State; but for his part he would never accompany them. He would die in Cuba or see Cuba free.⁽⁵⁾

Our good old Colonel Haynes did his duty like a man in calming down the bad feeling of the men, and in encouraging all to a little longer perseverance. So did several of the rest. I specify Colonel Haynes, because he was perhaps first in merit in his exertions in this respect, as befitted his position as the first now in rank among us, under the General.

The General's words had a momentary, but not much more than a momentary effect. They lightened up a little for a while the clouds hung (naturally enough indeed!) Over the spirits of the men; but the clouds settled down again over the dreary scene, black and heavy as before. We marched along a few hours, when I overheard a party consulting together about the expediency of forcing the General to accompany them in an effort to reach the coast. In this disposition we went on, in the direction of the plains, as feeble now in moral as in physical strength to withstand the first encounter we might have with the enemy. We halted and passed the night quietly by a little stream at the bottom of a small valley, near which we found perhaps a dozen wild oranges. With the exception of the General's horse, we had eaten absolutely nothing else since daybreak on the 19^th, at Candelaria, and were now at the 22d.

On the following morning, (August 23d, Saturday,) the weather being now a little clearer, and not having by noon discovered anything to serve us for food, after mounting to the tops of the highest trees near, we began to descend from the mountain range; and we had not marched far when we fell into a foot-path which led us into the road from the cafetal of Candelaria to San Cristoval, on which we had travelled before, and which we soon recognised. We had been wandering, lost, for four days in that savage range of mountain, starving and drenched under the hurricane of which I have spoken, and here we came out not more than three miles from the point at which we had entered by the impoverished path and the torrent-bed route above mentioned.

Having been received with so much friendly kindness on our former visit among the farm-houses about the foot of the mountains, on the skirt of the plain, we had no apprehension about venturing, provided we should not happen to fall in with troops. The General, attended by myself, preceded the men about three hundred yards. I need not draw a portrait of the forlorn aspect now presented, more or less, by all of us. If I knew the General's dress to be white, it was purely by a process of memory, not sight..

We had proceeded in this way a few miles, when we met two men at the distance of ten or fifteen paces, armed, one with a musket, the other with a gun. We had no other arms than the General's knife and my sword. They cried out, "Quien vive?" "España," was the General's reply, but the men quickly disappeared among the bushes. We went after them, but could see nothing more of them. The probability that these men were a patrol set to watch the road, and, that troops might be in the neighborhood, brought us soon to a stand, and the General determined then, after a short rest for the men, to fall backward on the Candelaria road. For security against surprise, he ordered me to divide the few muskets we had left, and to place half in the front and half in the rear, directing me to put the Hungarians in the front of our little column. We had scarcely begun to move, after the execution of this disposition, when suddenly we heard discharges of musketry from behind, and a loud tramping of cavalry on a sharp trot. The General ordered me to instantly bring the Hungarians to the rear, so as to collect there the ten or a dozen muskets, which were all we had, to cover the retreat of the defenceless body of our men. Hastening to the head of the column to execute the order, I was bringing back half a dozen Hungarians who were there, and who had muskets, when I found myself in the midst of a dispersion to the right and left. Of course we had no means of resistance; neither arms nor strength. The enemy was down upon us and in our midst, and our men scattered instantly into the bushes to the right and left of the road, up the thickly wooded hills between which the road there passed through a valley. My eyes never rested again on the manly form, and the kind, bright face of General Lopez! I was cut off from him. With the few Hungarians with me, I turned off to the left. The General (as I afterwards learned) was among those who turned into the bushes on the right of the road. This, our dispersion, took place at about six o'clock in the afternoon on the 23d. We had landed on the morning of the 12^th; Las Posas was fought on the 13^th; Frias on the 17^th; and the affair of Candelaria was on the 19^th; the hurricane in the mountain followed and now, on the 23d, this was the end of the Expedition, which after this cannot be said to have had any military existence.

Woeful, woeful indeed, were the sounds that then reached my ears, as I lay hidden not more than twenty yards from the road. The soldiers, being horsemen, did not venture for from the road into the bushes, probably from fear of single-handed danger, but they caught and massacred many of our poor fellows upon and near it. The groans, the cries, the shots and the sounds of blows, were sickening to the soul to hear. There was one sound of moaning in particular, that seemed very close to the thick clump of bushes in which I lay, and which, as it slowly expired into silence, seemed to proceed from some poor wounded wretch who had crawled away, carrying a death of agony with him; and it is in my years yet, though I had before seen and heard enough of death on a large scale, on the battle-fields of my own Hungary.

No mercy was shown to the defenceless, the unarmed, the yielded, the wounded. The cruelty was, as usual, in the same ratio with the cowardice, of which we had had ample proof when we could stand up in fair fight, in spite of the vast disparity of numbers. They were our butchers when they got an easy chance, but it was, and is, a comfort to know that we had always been their victors.

Seven of my countrymen were with me, of whom four were officers, Bontila, Radnitz, Palank, and Eichler, and three, Virag, Biro, and Nyikos, not officers. (With the exception of Biro, who was liberated as a Pole, or Russian subject, the rest I left all in Ceuta, when, at a later day, I made the escape from there, which I shall have yet to relate.) We retired cautiously further up the hill, and got to an almost inaccessible spot, where we were perfectly concealed, on a rock overhanging a gully, through which went a little creek. This creek crossed the road; there being a bridge, of course. Neither bridge nor road was in sight, but we could distinctly hear the troops coming and going, and sounds of Spanish talking. We lay as still as mice. After a while, all now having subsided into silence, I determined to creep down by the creek towards the bridge, to take a look at the state of things, and had a narrow escape in the attempt. Coming round upon it sooner that I expected, I was fully exposed to view, and myself saw a patrol who had just passed, his back being towards me. Religiously respecting his evening meditations, I backed out with small loss of time. Returning to where I had left my companions, I saw nothing of them. To my whispered inquiries in Magyar, no answers were returned, till at last I raised my voice a little louder, and this elicited an answer, begging me for God's sake not to speak. The bridge was, I believe, in the rear of the position of the troops, so that the patrol there was their rear outpost. We were therefore just behind the enemy, whose watch and pursuit were a little ahead of our refuge. To this we probably owed our safety, and freedom from further disturbance, through the night. I afterwards learned that the General with his nephew, his mulatto boy Pedro (now Mr. Thrasher's servant in New Orleans), and a few more, were in the corresponding situation on the other side of the road, and very near to it, like ourselves. The rest of the Expedition were all scattered, singly or in similar groups, through the woods and about the mountains, as they fled and hid each for himself.

Early the next morning (August 24^th, Sunday), we began to move further into the mountain range, on the skirt or slope on which our dispersion had taken place. My companions acceded readily to the plan I announced as mine, namely, that of staying a few days in the mountains, and making our way in a southerly direction; and at a distant point to take to the plain to learn the news, and the state of things, and to attempt to work along the coast in the night, concealing ourselves by day, until, with the help of some friendly paisano, if we should have the good fortune to meet with any, we might find some fishing-smack or other small craft, in which to launch our poor fortunes, such as they were, with a few days' provisions; sure at least that, however far we might go, we could not well fare much worse. Happily, I had a pocket compass. There were two muskets in our company, but no ammunition, so we threw them away. Some of us had swords, some knives. I had my sword, a faithful old companion in the Austrian army in Italy and Hungary.

But we were too much exhausted that day to travel much. Within the past five days, our small ration from the General's horse (on the 21^st) had been our only nourishment, and what demands on our strength for nourishment we had been passing through within that period, the reader will judge for himself from the plain and simple narrative it has been my effort to relate. We spent the greater part of the day in repose, and in efforts at sleep, which, with me at least, had but little success. Hunger, nervous irritation and excitement, and thought praying at the heart respecting the fate of the General, and the future before ourselves, left me but small chance of sleep. Towards evening, as we rambled feebly along, we came upon some young palms, which yielded us grateful and much needed refreshment, and beneath which, like Arabs of the desert, we determined to spend the night. And the night's dark mantle soon descended upon us, as we lay there beneath the slight roofing of the palmitas, in the midst of the mountains, on a welcome bed of gathered leaves, without either sentinels or much concern about attack; in a place where probably we were the first white men who had ever intruded on the solitary beauty and luxury of that wild vegetation. And there at last I slept well and soundly.

The young palm tress, or palmitas, were now for several days were almost our sole dependence for sustenance, as they were likewise to most of scattered comrades, wandering like ourselves, forlorn fugitives over these weary mountains.⁽⁶⁾ The 25^th, 26^th, and 27^th (Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday) were passed by us about in the same way. On Tuesday, we hid our arms, retaining only a few knives. Scarcely able to sustain and drag the weight of our own bodies, we had no strength to carry our swords, which were more over often an encumbrance in getting through the tangled places of the woods. I concealed mine in such a manner that I am confident that I shall have no great difficulty at some future day in going to the spot, unless unhappy auspices, to recover it.

The night of the 27^th we passed on some rocks, on the side of the same creek up whose bed we had treated, when we vanished, so much to the surprise of the Spaniards at Candelaria; the ravine, or creek bed, in which I had had to leave my horse. Our sufferings were sad enough through all this. At one period, we were thirty-six hours without finding water. At other times we found it in hollows of rocks, from which we eagerly sucked it up with cane-straws. The palmitas were not always procurable; about four a day were as much as we got for all of us. Occasionally a few snails of a large size fell welcome victims to our hunger. With the exhaustion of all strength, all care for life or consequences gradually passed away too. A torpid sort of apathy came over us, and presuming that the hour must soon arrive when nothing would be left but to lie down and die, we thus walked feebly and fitfully along, looking out only too see palmitas, without much thought of whether we were or were not seen by Spaniards. A mere dull and enfeebled animal instinct of life and self-preservation seemed alone to have survived all we had gone through. We were gradually sinking in inanition.

One exceedingly distressing circumstance aggravated our sufferings. Palank had a wound which he had received in the shoulder at Las Pozas. Under the influence of exposure, want of dressing, and even opportunities of washing it, all superadded to the extreme heat of the weather (August, in Cuba,) this wound assumed a horrid condition, and emitted an odor insupportable both to our poor friend and to us his companions.

At last arrived the day destined to bring relief from this lowest depth of our misery. On the 28^th August (Thursday), we stumbled on a footpath in the mountains, which we followed with great exertion and fatigue, now mounting, now descending, now winding, now straight, as it made its way into a valley opening before us. I felt assured that it must conduct us into a broader road, and to some human habitation; and determined to proceed on alone, telling my companions to wait for me under cover of the wood; and that if I did not return within a reasonable time, they might take some other direction, sure that one only led to death, the sole cause which should prevent my return to them. They opposed my departure; all wished to accompany me; a long and warm dispute (for men in our condition) ensued, and I finally consented that one should accompany me. This was Palank, whose wound made him the most in need of the shelter of a roof. But, after all, we found none, through all those windings of the path which had so excited our hopes; and after an hour's absence we returned to our comrades; not quite empty-handed, for we had found a few fruits, growing on a tree, of which the Cubans make a salad. Its name I forget.

While we were deliberating what course we should next pursue, we suddenly heard a loud sound of voices, calling out in the direction of the path; we also thought that we distinguished the barking of a dog. We quickly retired to a little distance back from the path till we came to a creek, which we waded; and beyond it, following it down a short distance, we were under the screen of some thick wood, from which we could see as well as hear, without being ourselves exposed to view. There was no doubt that there was a dog with the men; and presently we saw a party consisting of several mounted men, whom we presumed to be in pursuit of us.

Either they did not see us, or they chose to give us a wide berth. Certain it is that we soon lost sight of them, and ceased after a while to hear any more sounds from that quarter. We renewed our purpose of getting farther along down the valley, in pursuit of fruits; hunger now gnawing at us with redoubled fury from the slight taste we had just had. We succeeded in finding a few sour oranges, which we enjoyed as though they had been fruits of Eden. Having thus cheated hunger a little, and being much over come with fatigue, I sank at the foot of a shade tree, and was soon buried in a deep sleep. My companions retired to a shelter of some bushes, a little apart from where I lay.

But our sleep was not of long duration. Much sooner than I felt at all disposed to rise, I was awakened by feeling a good-sized black dog nosing and feeling about me, as though to satisfy his doubts as to whether I was a live Major Louis Schlesinger or a dead one. By the time I got my eyes open and fixed upon his, he made me a full and growling demonstration of his teeth, though without any further advances towards biting me. In a few moments, casting my eyes a little beyond him, I had the satisfaction of seeing a couple of countrymen with their two guns fixed in close aim straight upon me. I don't know why one would not have answered their purpose. However, neither their words nor tones were as hostile as the first impression of the muzzles of both dog and guns, for it was in quite an encouraging way that they told me to come out and not to fear anything.

To an invitation so polite, there was but one answer to be returned, and our acquaintance became a still closer one. They asked me what I was doing there. "Sleeping," was my answer, "along with my companions." This last word seemed to startle them a little; they looked at each other, and then inquired if they were still with me, and if we belonged to the Expedition. To both questions I answered "Yes." They then informed me, with the entire kindness of manner, that a general indulto had been granted for four days, for all of us; that if we accepted it within the time, we should be allowed to return freely to our country; that the greater part of the Expeditionaries had already availed themselves of the pardon, and the sixty-six of them had been sent back to the United States.

I was little disposed to believe in all of this, and told them that much rather than come in, to those offers of indulto, I would prefer to get out of the Island in any mode, even in a fisherman's skiff, and that I would be grateful to them all my life if they would show me the road to the coast; adding that I did not doubt their word, but that I had no confidence in the Spanish government. On the first head, they replied that it was impossible; and on the second, they protested strongly that it was true, and called all the saints to witness it. They concluded by telling me that General Lopez had been taken prisoner, and that he was the only one whose life would not be spared.

This last announcement finished me, and I told them that I surrendered myself into their hands; begging them only to take me first of all to their house and give me some nourishing food, as I had been now for many days living in such a manner that I could barely stand up on my feet.

I then called out to my comrades, and communicated to them what had passed, and what I had resolved on; leaving all free to act as they should choose. All adopted the same course, and it appeared to give much gratification to our two friends of the dog and guns.

We were then conducted about a couple of miles to a house where we were kindly received, and the same accounts were given to us. A banquet was quickly prepared for us, of a degree of luxury unknown to monarchs, nor ever imagined by Lucullus or Apicius, namely, beef, roast corn, plantains, potatoes, pork, eggs, coffee, &c.; seemingly the whole season's stock of the household. While we were eating it, many people came in from the neighborhood, I suppose about twenty, to see us. Many of them brought wine, aguardiente, &c., with them, for us to drink with them. All shook hands warmly with all of us, and would make us drink with them all round. Nothing could exceed their hearty kindness; and all gave us the same assurances we had already received. They told us we must go in to San Cristoval, to surrender to the Teniente Gobernador of the district there; that this was a necessary step, and that no evil would result from it to us.

Opposition was of course out of the question. After cordially thanking our good friends and entertainers, we mounted the horses they furnished us with, and set out for San Cristoval, which was a few leagues distant. As we rode along, I could not but notice with surprise that we had been taken almost within sight of the last spot at which our dispersion had occurred, and from which, after so much climbing and descending, travelling and wandering, over hill and vale, I had certainly supposed we were at a great distance.

About an hour's ride brought us to San Cristoval, by which time a great number of country people were about us, most of whom spoke to us with great kindness, and we presently entered the village. This we found literally swarming with veteran troops, without counting the mounted militia which came out at our arrival.

We were conducted to the presence of an officer, the authority of the place I suppose, who was himself a Venezuelan by birth, like General Lopez, but who spoke English pretty well. He came out to the door at the noise of our approach; addressed us a few important questions; among others, whether we knew anything of Lopez; our names, ranks, ages, and country; and concluded by saying that he was glad we had been taken that day, because it was the last of the indulto, which to-morrow would not have availed us. I then learned how far the grace extended to us went,--that it simply spared our lives, but was to leave us to languish them out amid the horrors of a Spanish presidio, or hard-labor imprisonments in a penal settlement.

We were just about to enter the house of the Teniente Gobernador (Lieutenant Governor), when I saw outside, at a little distance, a great concourse and tumult, and heard loud outcries, amid which I could distinguish "Viva la Reina! Vivan las tropas! Muera Lopez! " The governor hastily ordered a sergeant to take down our names, &c., and to put us with the rest of the prisoners, and he himself hurried off to meet the other body which was now just about entering the village.

It was in vain that I tried to linger a few moments to catch, were it but a single glimpse! We were hurried away. Gracious God! Here was the party which had captured the General himself, entering the same village within a few minutes of the same moment with myself! It was fitting that his aide-de-camp should be near him; but, alas, not thus! I thought at the moment that I would have given a world for the interchange of but a single glance, sufficient to tell my noble old commander of the heart's unchanged devotion to him,--or changed only to be deepened, in the hour of misfortune, in which I well knew that he stood serene and sublime in glorious ruin.

We were immediately taken to a house which served as a prison, where I had the consolation of finding myself in the midst of some five-and-twenty Americans, who told me that Col. Haynes, Captain Kelly, Ellis, and many of the Cubans, with sixty others of the volunteers, had been already forwarded to Havana. I believe we were all heartily glad to see each other, sad as were the circumstances of our reunion.

It was not long before new prisoners arrived, and were shut up with us. Among them were Captain Miguel Lopez, a Spaniard (no relation of the General, though of the same name) who had been a sergeant of the garrison of Cardenas, of veteran troops, on the occasion of the General's expedition to that place the year before, and who had there joined him with his men, returned with him to the United States, and now again returned with him to Cuba.⁽⁷⁾ There was also young Pedro Manuel Lopez, the General's nephew, who, after serving in the last operations of Paez, in Venezuela, had gone to the United States to follow the flag of his famous uncle; Pedro, the General's mulatto boy, (a general favorite); and several others, whose names I do not now recall. All these were brought in with their arms tied behind them, like bandits, by the ferocious party of Spaniards by whom they had been captured. Even the General had been treated in the same way by the scoundrel at their head, though, as I afterwards learned, the indignity had been apologized for by the first civilized Spanish officer to whom he was delivered over. The General's nephew and servant were not joined to us till the next morning. For that night they were confined in a house apart.

They related to me the manner of their captures. Their wanderings since the dispersion of the 23d had been much like our own. The General had been urged by some of them to quit them, and seek his own safety alone, which he would have had much better probability of effecting than when encumbered with them; as he would have had many chances of falling in with friends, would could have concealed him singly and supplied his wants, and who would have been sure great eventual reward for doing so, and for embarking him, in concert with his friends in Havana. The cause would survive, in his person, the failure of this attempt. But the General refused to consult his own safety apart from that of the few companions whom fate had still kept by his side. He still strove to keep them in heart, and to reach some quarter among the mountains where they could find sustenance and concealment. They learned about the offered indulto on its last day from some peasants whom they met, but they had no confidence in it. One of their number, however, shortly afterwards (I forget his name) said he could not endure any longer, and quitted them to go after the party from which they had received the information, and to surrender himself. "Now we are all lost," was the General's sole remark, as this young man departed. He did mean to imply treachery, but only a weakness which would be sure to betray that General Lopez was there, close at hand, and so to concentrate and quicken the search by the parties of troops, and mounted band s of Spaniards, which were scouring the country; in many cases, as I have been told, very unwilling peasants being forced into company with them.⁽⁸⁾

After this the General had no further idea that his little party could escape. He said that he hoped their lives would be spared, in consideration of his capture, though his own fate was sure. He spoke frequently during his wanderings about his friends in the United States, very affectionately of his true and tried American friends, Sigur, Henderson, and O'Sullivan; and rejoiced now that circumstances prevented Sanchez Yznaga, Macias, Gonsalez, and others from being with him. He still believed that they had in all probability carried to the Central Department the St. John's Expedition, by the return of the Pampero, and had hopes that they might have fared better in that quarter, which was the one to which he had himself intended to go. At all events he said that the revolutionary cause was not dead so long as they lived. Young Lopez believed that his uncle, towards the last, was looking out for a party to surrender to, for the purpose of making sure of bring his companions within the period of the indulto. He led them downward along the same valley by which we had come down. They must have been at no great distance behind us, and I cannot help thinking that the party accompanied by dogs, which we first saw, and whose observation we eluded by retiring across the creek, was at least part of the part which captured them. They also heard some barking, and presently came in view of a strong mounted and armed party (fifteen or sixteen in the number, I believe.) There were not more than some half dozen with the General; all unarmed, and, including himself, extremely exhausted and feeble. It is not true,as has been said, that the General was wounded. Often as he had in his life been under the rain of balls, he had never been wounded, and used to say that he could not be hit. He had, however, a slight bruise on one of his legs from a stumble on the rocks. He was indeed very much exhausted and enfeebled. When they came in sight of the armed party, the latter called out to them to throw themselves face on the ground, vientre á tierra. All obeyed, except the General, who stood erect; and the horsemen charged down roughly upon and into the midst of them as they lay. The General at once told them that he was General Lopez, and he called all to witness that he claimed for his companions, who surrendered voluntarily, the benefit of the indulto, the period of which had not expired. The captors behaved with great brutality, both in words and actions, treating them with every roughness and insult. They tied them all, the arms behind the back, with cords, which they had with them. To the General (I am not certain about the rest) they also tied a cord around his neck, the other end of which one of them held on to. In this mode they conducted them into San Cristoval, with insulting outcries as they proceeded. This was undoubtedly a band of Catalans or Spaniards, who were out in pursuit, stimulated by the reward of a thousand onzas ($17,000) which had been offered for the General. I have already notice a circumstance which proves them to have been under the command of a "teniente," though he was dressed in ordinary clothes.

This was, as nearly as I recollect, the substance of the account which was given us at the time by our new companions in captivity, who had been of the General's party.

General Lopez was hurried off without delay from San Cristoval, under strong guard, being separated from the rest, who remain there till the next day. The officer in command adopted the precaution of giving out one route for his illustrious prisoner, and then really sending him, by a rapid night march, by another route. This would certainly seem to indicate some apprehension of rescue; perhaps of some danger of explosion in Lopez's favor among some of the troops. From all I have heard, I do think that there were some of the Spanish regiments in Cuba, among which it would have been far from safe to trust the guarding and conveyance of Lopez. A pretty state of things would have existed had any considerable troop, moved by his old ascendancy and popularity, and by their general hatred toward their own tyrannical officers, suddenly released and placed him at their head. But it is idle now to speculate on such might-have-beens! With great precautions for his custody, but with entire personal respect and good treatment, I believe, after being provided with proper dress and refreshment, he was safely conveyed to Mariel, where he was embarked on board a steamer, and arrived in Havana on the evening of the 31^st (Sunday). Early on the following morning, that noble heart had ceased to beat, and "Querida Cuba!" were his last words, as they had also been the first which, when we landed together from the Pampero, on the morning of the 12^th, (I saw and heard) he saluted, and knelt to kiss, the soil of "Beloved Cuba."

Throughout, after his capture, I have understood, (as indeed I did not need to be told) that General Lopez behaved with perfect dignity, serenity, and coolness. On board the steamer, from Mariel to Havana, I was assured that he might well have been taken for an indifferent passenger. He smoked, and conversed as pleasantly with the officers and others attending him, as though still their General, instead of their prisoner, and discussed much of the military aspects of their strange little campaign. He would enter with entire earnestness, and at the same time with simplicity and absence of all affectation, and in his usual manner, which was often playful, as well as always very courteous and gentlemanly, into topics quite foreign to his present situation. His smile of old, which had a peculiar charm, was not wanting from his countenance. His mind was entirely made up to death, and he had no need of any unusual effort to meet it, and look it serenely in the face,--I do not say, without fear, for that was a matter of course, but without perturbation. He discussed the question of the manner of his death, very much as he might have talked of that of another person similarly situated. He was under interior sentence of death by the garrote, for his former planned insurrection in the Central Department in 1848, but he did not believe that it would be inflicted that way. He thought that his old military rank and services would secure him from Concha (who had, I believe, served under him against the Carlists in Spain) the favor of being shot as a befitted soldier. If Concha had been left to himself, and, above all, if Lopez could have obtained the interview with him which he asked for, this would probably have been the case. But the same really controlling Catalan influences at Havana, ever bitter, malignant, and revengeful, which prevented Concha from indulging his own personal desire to spare the lives of four-fifths of Crittenden's men, cut off also General Lopez from the indulgence of the "cuatro tiros," or four shots; and the garrote, vainly called "vil," marked a spot from which a glorious monumental shaft is yet destined to rise high towards the heavens.

Some persons have thought that "General Lopez ought not to have suffered himself to be taken alive." But Lopez was right. The calm, high dignity, and Christian nobleness of his death, was something far more worthy of his true greatness of soul, and far more serviceable, in its moral effect, to the cause for which he died, than if he had died the death of a mere desperate resistance to the last. Moreover, his religious sentiment forbade suicide, as humanity and goodness of a heart forbade all useless shedding of blood, when no further struggle remained of benefit to the cause.

I have been assured (and the information comes very direct from the General's own lips, within his last few days), that our disaster and failure did not in the least degree shake his confidence in the eventual, and the early, success of the Cuban revolution for liberty and independence. He considered that the Spanish dominion in Cuba had now its moral wound, even though it did not fall at the moment under the blow, but had been able, on the contrary, to strike down, in brief triumph, the hand that had dealt it. The demonstration afforded by his less than 300 men, as to what could be done, and as to the powerlessness of the Spanish troops against any really serious force of American auxiliaries to a Creole rising, he considered to have settled the question, no less certainly than if he had lived to be present at the last act of the drama. He believed too that his death would deeply move the heart of Cuba,⁽⁹⁾ and stir the Creoles to greater efforts than they had made in his lifetime.

More than a year has passed since what I have related. There is no more division of parties or thoughts now about Lopez, at least among the Cubans. Old opponents recognize him now as "the military chief elected by the Cubans and charged by them with the work of redemption. He represented the ruling idea--independence; he obeyed the desire of the Cuban people--revolution." Even Spanish enemies of his in Havana say of him that he was too kind-hearted a man to have been the leader adapted to such a kind of warfare as this, against the ferocity of their character and system. This was only half true, but it is at least an enemy's tribute to a part of his character. The anniversary First of September, in the present year, was a day of universal mourning throughout the island. Brides in Cuba send to the United States for miniatures of Lopez to be worn secretly near their hearts on the reverse side of those of their bridegrooms. And in the United States, I have seen tears of men flowing for him like rain, in unconsoled freshness of grief. So true a patriot martyr was he; so good and so gentle a man, as well as a soldier so gallant and so glorious.

I will be pardoned for inserting here a few words of personal tribute to General Lopez from another member of the Expedition, Major Kelly, who published them in a paper established by himself in New Orleans, to advocate the election of Gen. Scott, called the "True Issue." I copy them for the sake of showing that the warm and strong terms in which I have felt called upon to speak of the General, alike by the impulses of the heart and the convictions of the judgement, are no expression of mere individual partiality. I am farther induced to do so, by the remembrance of a vile slander, which was once put forth, and caught up eagerly by some papers to which vile slanders are congenial food, to the effect that the members of the Expedition in prison at Havana, on the morning of the General's death, exulted in it with a revengeful satisfaction. It was an infamous lie. Profound sorrow and gloom reigned among them. The following is the language of Major Kelly:

"In the small band of patriots who followed Gene. Lopez to the Island of Cuba, we find the deepest feeling of regret at his death. His deportment to that little band was frank and prepossessing; his manners mild and amiable. In battle, he was brave and courageous. Endowed with usual ability, he advocated the cause of Cuban liberty in advance of the times. The principle with which that cause was blended is now openly and boldly advocated upon the streets and in private circles, and by some of our statesmen with vigor, efficiency, and fearlessness.

"Gen. Lopez was guided by just and correct motives when he assumed the command of the little band of Cuban patriots in this city. He was conscious it was right, and, under that conviction, he clung to it with unshrinking constancy with his with his patriot followers, as long as a gun would make fire. The reputation he acquired in that short campaign was an enviable one. Had he succeeded, his named would have been written in letters of gold. Friends weep over the misfortune, and strangers sympathize in it. The friends of Cuban liberty are mute and bewildered with this stunning blow. A gloom pervades the community of Cuban liberators. In truth, there is

"He has gone from this troubled and exciting theatre of action, we fondly hope and believe, to a better and brighter land."

I will add some remarks here respecting the causes of the failure of this Expedition; before resuming that thread of my (now insignificant) personal narrative, which I dropped some pages back, to tell about the General's capture, and the sorrowful scenes that followed it.

1. In the first place, we were not able to carry out at all the expedition the General had planned. The reader will remember that we were to have gone up first to the St. John's River, Florida, there to take in a large number of first-rate men, and a well assorted supply of arms, artillery, ammunition, &c., including rifles for the Expedition, and extra arms for the people; and also 150 saddles to mount at once a portion of the force. We were then to have gone to the Central Department, where the population was more dense, and at the same time more ready for insurrection, and where partial risings already existed; where provisions were everywhere abundant, and abundance of horses at once procurable. From what I have, simply and honestly, related of what was done, in our crippled condition, and under many and heavy disadvantages and misfortunes which attended us in the Vuelta Abajo, any fair-minded can judge for himself what would have been our prospects had the General been able to execute this plan. The universal opinion, which I have since heard expressed by Cubans in the United States, who were in the Island at the time, including the most opposed to "small expeditions," is, that if General Lopez had reached the Central Department, according to his plan, instead of landing where he did, even with the ill provided force with which he did land, and without taking into account the men and materials at the St. John's River which he was forced to abandon, he would infallibly have succeeded.

And the immediate cause which broke up all this plan, was the unexpected exhaustion of our coal, while to the westward of Key West, which was spoken of on an earlier page. The active zeal of the U.S. government against us was one principle cause leading to this deficit in our coal, since it made necessary our getting off in such a confused hurry, and gave rise to the disadvantageous manner in which were made those repairs to the machinery of the Pampero, which unfortunately were found to be necessary on her arrival at New Orleans from her last preceding trip to Galveston.

2. This first heavy loss having been sustained, and the Expedition (encouraged by the accounts received at Key West) having started to make a landing to the westward of Havana, a second misfortune (no fault of the General, either in calculation or execution) was, that, instead of cutting straight across, to have the benefit of a sudden landing early the next morning, why, the next morning, when the horizon cleared, behold we were close in to Havana itself! We thus had to spend the day working to the westward; in doing which, we were seen and recognized by the Esperanza frigate, and positive news of our arrival was thus conveyed to the Captain General, (already on the alert, in consequence of our suspicious appearance off Havana) in time to enable him to pounce down upon us, so as to give us battle within little over twenty-four hours after our landing; to send expresses to the troops in all directions; and to pour down such forces on us that we were immediately hemmed around with troops, in the proportion of at least twenty-five to one of our own number. The General had thus no chance to get into the interior in advance of the troops, to open any communication with his friends, issue his proclamation and addresses, take up any position where he could be supplied with provisions, or be joined by any of the patriot Creoles. If he could have had but two or three days' start, as he expected, before being thus pounced upon, the whole campaign would have taken a very different turn; and the cause of this was again an unfortunate casualty of navigation, which certainly the General could neither have foreseen nor prevented.

3. Well, he has landed, without his artillery, armament, or the men at the St. John's, and with all the disadvantages growing out of that lamentable casualty of the navigation; but then comes the stunning blow of misfortune, which I have before called the death-wound of the enterprise, namely, the Crittenden disaster! Critteneden's fatal delay in executing his orders to close up to the main body at Las Pozas; his retreat to the launches, which (most unfortunately for him and for all) his men knew to be on the shore; their capture, by a Spanish steamer, as fugitives on the water; crowned, and proved to the people of Cuba, by the Atares Massacre! The facts and circumstances of this most unhappy event have been pretty fully explain above. I will only remark that had it been otherwise; had Crittenden joined us before the battle; had he (still better) come up during the fighting, or during the flying; had he joined us after it, as Kelly did,--I have no doubt that all would have been different. The moral effect of our first battle would have been in accordance with the fact, instead the reverse of it, and all Cuba would have been electrified with the victory. See its effect on the Spanish troops themselves, in their conduct at Frias, which was really won by the musketry of Las Pozas. To say nothing of higher, officers from whom Lopez had promises, I have been recently informed of one Spanish captain in particular, in that region, who was prepared, to "pronounce" for Lopez with his company, and who afterwards, to the Creole gentleman to whom he was pledged, gave this event as the reason which made it impossible. The General always said, that after he should win his first engagement, the soldiers would begin to "pronounce" and come over to him. But what could be expected after such a blow as that of Atares?

In order that this opinion of mine, in regard to the difference of result which would probably have been witnessed but for this fatal disaster, may not be regarded as proceeding from the one-sided mode of viewing the subject, which might naturally enough be imputed to me, I desire to add a piece of testimony to the same effect, which I have recently cut from the newspapers. The New York Express, one of the most hostile papers in the United States to the Cuban cause, and one of the two which enjoyed the questionable honor of being permitted entrance into Havana when a rigid edict of exclusion was applied to all the rest of the American press, accompanies a quotation from the Havana correspondent of the New Orleans Picayune, (Sept. 2d) with the endorsement of calling that correspondent "usually reliable and well informed." That same correspondent writes in another letter (Aug. 31^st) in the following terms:

"I cannot help thinking (knowing the disaffection which exists throughout the Island to Spanish rule), had the last expedition not been so unfortunate as to lose, at the very outset of their disembarkation here (through the mistaken plan⁽¹⁰⁾ which separated Crittenden's command), fifty of Lopez's best men, a different result might have been expected; because the same mails which contained the news of the arrival of General Lopez on the Island to the people of the interior, likewise contained the fatal intelligence of the capture of Crittenden's forces attempting to escape, as the Government took care should be generally known, and their hasty execution. The natives, knowing this for a fact, could not but believe that the expedition had been routed from the moment of its landing, and consequently that no efforts of theirs, without arms, could be available under the circumstances.

4. Well, again, even after all the drawbacks and disasters, accumulated by hostile fortune on the General's devoted head; after them all, and in spite of them all, he would probably still have been successful in his enterprise , as he was in fact victorious in his battle, had it not been for that miserable want of subordination and manageableness among our own men, of which I have spoken. In point of fact, nothing could be done with them further than simply repulsing, firmly and gallantly indeed, wand with a terrible efficiency of musketry, the attacks of the enemy. When I write at all I must tell the truth. All fruits of these defensive victories were lost from the impossibility of carrying them any further then that mere defensive character. This proceeded mainly from want of numbers to give the men confidence; of discipline to supply the want of numbers; or of devotion and obedience to their officers, who were themselves, for the most part, wanting in military experience and practice, and who could not perhaps be expected to exercise the necessary strictness and steadiness of government over their men. I have before mentioned that our men were not, for the most part, a picked body of men of superior intelligence and respectability, like the Kentuckians who were to have composed the first Expedition. They were improvised in New Orleans almost at the moment of starting; and this was the consequence of the urgency of the calls for the General's coming, which were proceeding from the Island; and of the exaggerated accounts which came from there of the progress and success of the Revolution. Rapidly and as well as our men could load, aim and fire, they would not attack, charge, pursue. I believe that we twice held the life of Cuba within reach of our grasp,--at Las Pozas and at Frias. Yet, from this cause, we had to retreat from our very victories as though they had been defeats.

Another manifestation of the same evil cause of manifold evils, was to be seen in the way in which we lost so many men by their dropping of from our line of march, and still a larger number of muskets by the men dropping them. Fatigue, insufficiency of food, and the great heat of the weather, were the causes of this undoubtedly in a large proportion of cases. Discouragement, too, had something to do with. In some cases individuals probably fancied that they would be safer from the great hazards which they felt to attend the movements of our ill-armed and destitute little army, almost fugitive from its victories, if they could conceal themselves in the woods during at least its early days of crisis, than if they should remain attached to the main body. Physical exhaustion naturally gave attractiveness to such reasoning. To men so situated, the proximity to the coast and to the small craft to be found there, was always an evil temptation in the rear, when they saw so little temptation inviting them forward in the front. I doubt whether these men had any realizing belief of the fate they were sure to meet if they should chance to fall into the hands of the Spaniards; they probably imagined chances of fair treatment to individuals, unarmed, who had given proof of having abandoned the Expedition; even this hazard being encountered only in the event of their failure to find concealment and eventual escape in the course. Whatever may have been the various causes operating on the various individuals, who either fell off from us altogether, or did what was just as bad, in insanely throwing away their ammunition and muskets, certain it is that the effect existed to a most disastrous degree. At Las Pozas (13^th) we fought with about 280 muskets. Our loss in the battle was more then compensated by Kelly's arrival after it, and by the nine recruits we received, in the six Spanish prisoners who joined us at Las Pozas and the three Creoles whom I have mentioned as having done so afterwards; and yet at Frias (17^th) we had only about 190 muskets; and by the 19^th, at Candelaria, we were reduced to an utterly defenceless state, having not over 40 muskets, and those in bad condition from the rain. Finally, on the day of our dispersion (23d), we had got down to ten or a dozen. If this mad conduct on the part of so large a proportion of our men had not disarmed the Expedition, I know reason why we should not have done the same at Candelaria as we had already twice done before. We should then have been spared those dreadful four days of hurricane in the mountain, and could not have descended into the plain; and after three victories we should probably have been able to put a very different aspect upon the state of things there. I have already said that a strong disposition to rise was reported to us to exist at San Cristoval; and nothing could exceed the friendly spirit exhibited by the people at the farm-houses in that neighborhood, both on the occasion of the visit made to them by the General, attended by me, and after our capture, as far as I both observed in actual experience and heard from my associates in captivity. Had we been able to afford them a reasonable encouragement and prospect of success, and to relieve them from the heavy pressure of the Spanish troops, I have no doubt that we should have been largely recruited from among them. This opinion is confirmed by another recent indication, for which I am indebted to that same intelligent authority endorsed by the bitterly anti-Cuban New York Express as a correspondent "usually reliable and well informed." In his letter from Havana of Sept. 2d, 1852, in an extract copied by the Express itself, he says:

"It appears now to be beyond all doubt that the Creoles on this Island did intend to make a stroke for independence, and that it was to have commenced at San Cristoval, in the Vuelta de Abajo, some time in the month of August. It seems now to be well understood that this was defeated by the measures of the Government, in consequence of the plans of the Creole party being divulged to the Government by the informer, Chapotin y Patin. They expected to rise and hold out through the Island, until succored from the United States."

If without the presence of the General, or of any American auxiliary "Apatent rifles," at all, a year afterwards, and after the natural discouragement consequent on the recent failure, such a rising was projected in that same region, and was intended t commence at this very self same Cristoval, it affords strong presumptive evidence in support of what I have said. I leave it to the candid judgement of the reader, whether friendly or unfriendly.

5. One other cause of our failure remains to be alluded to, the failure of the expected reinforcements from New Orleans, and from the St. John's river. On page 566, I have stated the facts respecting the former, nor need I do more now than refer the reader back to that page. The arrival of the Kentuckians would have transformed everything. They could have dispatched, had the New Orleans committee possessed, or been able to raise, a very moderate sum, so as to have landed within two or three days after us. The General certainly had every reason to expect them very confidently. How far that expectation entered into the reasons which decided his course at Key West, can now only be a matter of presumption; though I must say, that, in view of the news sent to him from Cuba, I myself believe that he would then have gone over as he did, whether with or without that immediate expectation. Still, he had the expectation; and had a right to have it; and it was in itself a material element in the question. At New Orleans he left the Kentucky regiment, procurable steamers, an enthusiastic committee, and a community in a fever of friendly excitement and interest. At the St. John's River were a good body of men ready and waiting, a thorough equipment of arms, artillery, &c., and the Pampero had gone for them, coal being the only article in which she was deficient. The St. John's was not far from Savannah; and, active as was the administration against him, yet had he on the other hand true, capable and zealous friends there. But everything went wrong! And everything went slow!--and before the first musket of reinforcement followed, the news came of the fatal First of September at Havana, and all was over.

6. And now in reviewing the causes of the failure of the Expedition, this is, perhaps, the proper place to speak of the conduct of the Creoles of Cuba in regard to it and to General Lopez.

That the Creoles are very much to blame for not having joined the General, there can be no doubt. I say this in spite of the extenuating circumstances which have been explained above. True, there was much to discourage. But the occasion, to them, called for heroism, not for ordinary estimates of chances; for devotion even to self-sacrifice. General Lopez had at least five leading persons in the Vuelta Abajo, in correspondence with him, who were at the head of their respective organizations of men, reported to him as being ready to rise in very considerable force on his coming. When he came, it was their duty to rise, with greater or smaller numbers, according to the heart if their followers; singly, if they could do no better. There are occasions when men are bound to go forth to duty even though they see Death himself guarding the way. Death and Ruin are not the worst of human evils. These men ought not to have been discouraged, or at least not paralyzed into entire inaction and the forfeiture of all their pledges, even though the Atares Massacre did exhibit the enterprise as apparently routed and dispersed at the first blow. They ought to have done at least what in them lay to remedy and redeem the first disaster; or, failing in that, they ought to have come forward, if need were to perish nobly by the side of their heroic chief, who had come to them at their own call.

I feel tempted to introduce here an extract from a letter, now before me, from an intelligent and patriotic gentleman, of Cuban birth (De Gournay), who visited the Vuelta Abajo shortly before the coming of the Expedition, as an agent from General Lopez to his friends in that region; and especially to the persons with whom, as leaders of several intended pronunciamentos at different points, the General had been in communication throughout his preceding efforts for organizing the revolution in Cuba. The gentleman I refer to was suspected, arrested and sent to Havana, and was at that place, unable to get away from it, at the period of the expedition. He is at present in France, and the following is an extract from a recent letter to a confidential friend.

"I really believe our noble chief would have been successful but for unexpected circumstances. Amongst the leaders with whom I dealt in the Vuelta Abajo, only one (A. B.) showed himself a man. Well, with his party alone, could we have begun the intended, I believe to this day the General could have been saved. . . . .His reaching the interior of the Vuelta would, I believe, have produced a movement strong enough to secure his objects. . . . .But we failed at our necks= peril; my letters, (to my eternal regret), perhaps contributed to the General's altering his first plan. What decided him, I think, was the news he got at Key West, where C. D.,⁽¹¹⁾ to whom A. B. had told he was returning home to rise in the Vuelta, with 300 Gujiros, told the General that A. B. had risen with his men; which only corroborated what I had told the General, by showing as done what I announced to him as intended. From what I saw I do not think the masses would have been influenced so much by the numerical force of the landing party as by their own immediate leaders, who often lack decision, and above all, union and harmony in their designs, being almost always distrustful of each other.@

I know, by good evidence, of one instance (I do not mean to say that there may not have been others,) in which a respectable number of guajiros, or countrymen, in the region where we were, did faithfully keep the appointment which required them to assemble at the estate of a certain gentleman, on the signal afforded by the news of the General=s arrival; but they were sent back by the gentleman referred to, to whom they looked up as their head, who told them that all had gone wrong, that there was no hope of doing anything now, and that they had nothing left but to retire to their homes; and the gentleman himself at once left that part of the country.

It is easy for us to censure, at a distance and at our secure leisure, the supposed want of spirit or patriotism of the Creoles, for not having suddenly sprung into a nation of heroes, from centuries of a tropical colonial education. As I have already said, there were some who were bound to come forward and do their best, (and it would have been noble in all,) even though the prospect might have seemed utterly hopeless. But taking the world as it is, we have neither right nor reason to blame a people for not having risen above the ordinary level of human nature. Heroism is individual not national. Martyrdom earns a crown, and crowns are for single heads, and not for masses. If the Creoles yielded the discouragement when they thought all was lost, and when they saw all the supposed evidence of it in such a fact as the capture and execution of fifty fugitives in boats, had not those fugitives themselves done the same thing on their presumption of hopelessness? Had not Kelly much difficulty in preventing his company from doing the same? Did not the six hundred of the Cardenas Expedition retire on early discouragement, carrying off the General and some of their officers virtual prisoners with them? I have been assured that many, many a fine youth of Cuba was in fact shot down, and buried like a dog by the roadside, in vain attempts to penetrate to the region in which they might join the General, routed and dispersed as the Expedition was represented as being. I have been assured, too, that there were many Creoles who rode in the Spanish troops, who were out in the field for the real purpose of joining the General if they could, but who never got a chance; and whose policy then caused them to affect violent zeal in behalf of the government , in order to avert the fatal danger of Spanish suspicion. This is confirmed by the statements which have recently appeared in the published letters from Havana, to the effect that, among the prisoners brought in from the Vuelta Abajo, for the late discovered conspiracy, there many who had received decorations the year before, for their zeal displayed in support of the government at the time of the Expedition. A European friend who was in that region before and at the time in question, has mentioned to me the case of a young man, of superior family, known positively to him to have been engaged for weeks before the General=s coming, in casting bullets, etc., and preparing for the expected campaign; who was a string and vehement revolutionist and patriot, who in fact mounted his horse and set out to join the General, but who, finding everything apparently reduced to hopelessness, cut quite a figure among the Spaniards as a zealous volunteer loyalist. I have also been told that there were parties out in various directions searching for Lopez, when all was lost, for the real purpose of the concealing and carrying him off in safety; and I know that a gentleman of Havana, (not related to him) offered ten thousand dollars for the General=s embarkation. The indulto for four days, moreover, stimulated not a few among the peasantry of that region to active search after scattered fragments of the Expedition, a friendly search disguised as a hostile pursuit. There can be no doubt, for example, that the party by which my own companions and myself were found, brought in, and entertained with such overflowing hospitality, were cordial friends. It is certain that they understood the terms of the indulto as granting pardon and return home to those coming in to take the benefit of it in time. It was not until we were in the hands of the troops at San Cristoval, that we learned that our lives alone were to be spared, and that they were to be languished out in presidio. The unarmed condition of the Creoles must also be taken into account in judging them, and the fact that they had expected arms to be brought to them by the General, with the Expedition as a sort of escort guard to bring them; and when it was known that the latter had nothing of the kind to furnish them, but, on the contrary, that its members were throwing away their own arms, and wandering therefore, defenceless fugitives among the mountains, how was it to be expected, I ask, that they should have come forward, to rush upon ruin for their families and themselves by joining us under such circumstances as I have depicted in the course of this narrative? Among what people would have found very many capable of what the Creoles have been so much blamed for not doing?

Nor should it be forgotten, as I have related above, and as all the returned Expeditionaries will testify, that there was certainly no company in our little army that behaved better, or fought more bravely, than the Cuban Company. That company, indeed, executed (at Las Pozas) the only bayonet charge that was made on our side during our little campaign, and did it admirably. And, among the officers commanding American companies, who surpassed, in all the qualities of gentleman and soldier, the gallant, handsome, but unfortunate Gotay! The brave Oberto, who fell at Las Pozas, was worthily succeeded, in the command of the Cuban company, by Diego Hernandez y Ruiz, who made his escape from Cadiz some time after my own from Ceuta, and whom I have had the pleasure of meeting again in New York.

The late conspiracy for an insurrection in the Vuelto Abajo, to take place as a sort of anniversary celebration of our unhappy Expedition, though they had now no General Lopez, with his military prestige, and no expedition of American auxiliaries, but on the contrary all the sad and terrifying warning of the memory of the preceding year;--the fact that its extent was such as to have caused the dungeons and forts of Havana, and other places, to recently be crowded with hundreds of accused or suspected persons;--the boldness evinced in the publication of La Voz del Pueblo, within the very shadow of the palace walls of the Captain General, and its persevering appearance about the streets and on the walls of Havana;--and the noble manner in which so many Creoles have gone to the scaffold for their country, dying so gallantly and unflinchingly, and refusing to purchase pardon by disclosures against associates,--these facts, it must be admitted by the most unkindly disposed, go far towards the redemption of the Creoles of Cuba from the opprobrium which prejudice has heaped upon them, in hasty judgements of the facts of General Lopez=s two Expeditions. They have their faults, grave ones, which seem incident to the Hispano-colonial character; but they have also their excellent qualities; they are not deficient in bravery; and there is no doubt that to a man they hate the Spanish dominion; while individual instances of high nobleness abound among them.

A Cuban gentleman of high character and standing has related to a reliable informant, from whom I have it, the following remarkable incident. At some future day a second edition of this Narrative may possibly be published , with many responsible names spread forth, where now manifest reasons compel me to protect their secrecy. In the evening after the General=s arrival at Havana, when it was known that he was en capilla as it is termed, or in the hours of last religious preparation for death, and that he was to be executed the next morning, a Cuban gentleman went to the house of another, by whom he had reason to presume that his position would be favorable received; and offered to be ready with fifty companions the next morning, if the other would furnish fifty more, with concealed knives and pistols; to be as close as possible to the spot of the intended execution, as spectators, and at a signal to fall upon the General's guard, seize his person, release, and arm him, and give the grito for an insurrection; trusting all to the suddeness and boldness of the movement, to the hope that some of the troops would join it, and to safety from the guns of the forts and vessels which bore on the spot, because they could not fire upon the mingled crowd of friends and enemies. The proposition was rejected as impracticable, under the circumstances of the occasion.

Now, the fact of this proposition having been made, though it was not taken up by the party who received it, proves several things. It proves heroic daring and devotion on the part of the individual who made it. It proves that he knew he could rely on a band of fifty companions no less daring and devoted. It proves the existence of a pretty strong confidence felt in the people of Havana for a street rising against the Spaniards when the toeskin of an adequate occasion should sound to them. It proves, too, that even at that last hour there were those who expected much from Lopez's popularity with the troops. The project was a wild one, indeed, but nobly wild. It was no doubt wisely and properly rejected. General Lopez himself, if he had been within the reach of consultation on the subject, would have no doubt condemned and forbidden it. With its large proportion of a savage and imbrued African population, (literally, African I mean,) and the prospect of a deadly street and house struggle between the Creoles and a large Spanish population, exclusive of the troops, I do not believe that Lopez would have allowed Havana to be made the theatre of the scenes which would have ensued, had he been thus rescued with success, and placed at the head of an impromptu city insurrection. He would have preferred to die with dignity and greatness, as he did die, with his peace religiously made with God and man; and to leave the fruit of the disenthralment of Cuba to ripen for a year or two longer, quickening and fertilizing the tardy soil meanwhile with the rich tribute of his blood. His day had come to die,--when, how, could he have died more gloriously, more worthily of himself, than as he did? Like Moses on the summit of Pizgah, it was allotted to him to lead his people to the border of their promised land of Liberty, but not with his own step to tread the sacred soil. Far, far better for Lopez thus to have died, and to have conquered all hearts in his dying, than to have triumphed the victor in such a struggle, through streets slippery with blood, blazing with conflagration, and battered with bombardment.

One very strange circumstance connected with the revolutionary movements in Cuba last year, was the deceptiveness of many of the accounts, from both sides, Creole as well as Spanish, which were sent to the United States. This most censurable and proving course of proceeding, on the part of some individuals, really produced direct effects to the Expedition so mischievous, as well as indirect effects upon American public opinion so seriously and permanently injurious, that it ought not, and by me shall not, be passed over in friendly silence. It is certain that there was in Havana one person (there may have been more, but the proof I know of applies to but one,) who systematically, and as a means of forwarding the revolution, issued false accounts,--false sometimes in exaggeration, and false at others in sheer invention,--all tending to magnify the insurrectionary movements and successes. This was designed, by the individual in question, as a counterpoise to the well-known systematic mendacity of the government and its organs the other way. His idea was to stimulate and encourage the Creoles elsewhere to come boldly forward, and in this way he expected to see verified his own foolish, and worse than foolish, mendacities. At the same time, he probably expected to exert a similar influence on the friends of the Cuban cause in the United States. The absence of all freedom in Havana, whether of the press or of public conversation, and the habitual presumption that four-fifths of all governmental statements are lies, makes Havana a rich soil for the temporary luxuriance of false reports, secretly whispered from mouth to mouth, and never subjected, nor liable to be subjected, to the restraining influence of any kind of verification. Any one or more individuals who should occupy that position, in the revolutionary Creole circles, which would make them likely to conceive such a precious plan, of assailing the battlements of the Morro with masked batteries of false reports, would have full and free swing in Havana for carrying it out. A few hours would give general currency to the reports thus set afloat ; and in such cases reports always grow as they go. Soon, the very number of circulators, repeating the same story from different quarters, so strengthens the presumptions of its truth, that it is impossible to doubt it, especially with hope and favor to incline to the side of belief; and for a while the flattering falsehood fills the universal Creole heart with joy and exultation. Different letter-writers then communicate it to as many journals in the American cities. Scores of private individuals in Havana write the same thing to their exiled friends abroad, and some of these private letters find their way also into the American papers. All the world gets misled, and no where is the deception or exaggeration, as the case may be, more implicitly believed than in Havana itself; and by none more truly than by the distant friends who are thus imposed upon, by such a combination of evidences crowding in them from so many distinct sources. What more signal instance could I cite, than the famous "Cascorro bulletin," which purported to issue from a camp of patriot insurgents securely posted among the Cascorro mountains in the Central Department, in force between two and three thousand strong? This document was, in fact, written and printed in Havana; a few copies of it were circulated there, as though received from the Patriot camp; numerous written transcripts eagerly made; printed copies and written transcripts were enclosed in the correspondence, public and private, to the United States; and, of course, it contents believed there, as they had been also in Havana. It was a pure fiction, and an abominable one; and its motive yield no justification, though it was no doubt deemed by its unscrupulous concocters a fine stroke of bold lying for their country's good; and something far preferable to going out to the field to fight for her! There were several risings in the Central Department, but nothing like the plan which had been projected by the parties in Havana under whose guidance they had been concerted; and no such force as represented by the Cascorro bulletin ever assembled together. Isolated and premature, because impatiently precipitated in advance of General Lopez's preparations for coming, and without waiting to receive the signal of time from him, these movements (of which Joaquim Aguero was the chief), as also that in the neighborhood of Trinidad (under Isidoro Armenteros, a wealthy planter), begun among an unarmed people, without military leaders, were suffocated in blood, by the numbers and activity of the disciplined troops, before Lopez had possibly time to arrive upon the scene. The Cascorro bulletin, and other similar reports, were part of a system to stimulate the progress of the revolutionary flame thus prematurely kindled. If the fatal consequences of such bad means for sustaining a first mistake, had been limited to its individual author or authors, it would have been a retribution, in regard to which a sense of satisfied justice would certainly go far to temper personal regrets and compassion. But when we know, that, while they have scarcely been reached at all by those consequences, General Lopez, Pragay, Crittenden, all, all whose noble blood watered the soil of Cuba in our unfortunate Expedition, may really be said to have been led to their fate through the direct operation of this criminal folly, when we know and remember all this, I say, it is not easy to restrain within charitable limits the indignation with which it must be regarded by all men of either honor or sense. It was this system which deranged by precipitation the General's plans, just as they were ripening into execution; which caused him to go with the comparatively inferior men who composed a large part of the Expedition, instead of with the picked Kentuckians; which at Key West made him believe that the Vuelta Abajo was in a blaze of insurrection, at the same time that the magnitude of the movements at the eastward had drained off nearly all the troops from Havana. In point of fact, the premature risings of the Central Department were crushed before we arrived,--their leaders captured or shot,--their bands dispersed,--the troops flushed with their late easy successes,--the revolutionary cause cut off from the prestige of confidence in the expected movements in the Centre,--confidence in the statements circulated about its successes deeply damaged,--and, on the whole, the Island in precisely the most unfavorable state, and at the most inauspicious moment, for any rising to respond to the General's landing when it did take place.

So much for the fruits of this mode of warfare and revolutionizing. I do not know what individual or individuals are to be held to historical responsibility for the miserable and foolish "stratagem of war," here referred to. Perhaps they will now never be publicly known. Whoever they are, I hope they may read these pages, and know that they have done more than the Spaniards to suffocate the revolution in its cradle; that they have brought on their country a discredit scarcely retrievable by a generation; and that no pardon for their conduct is to be earned by all the tears of shame and remorse that they can shed through the rest of their lives, whether spent in continued chains, or in a freedom only to be achieved by nobler hands, nobler spirits and nobler means.

I have above explained how easy it was for one or two individuals alone to do all this; and such I believe to have been the case. The Cubans in general, by many of whom I have heard it severely condemned, are not to be justly held responsible for it;--although it is certain that their pronunciation of their beautiful language is not the sole evidence which attests their descent from the Andalusian portion of the fine old Spanish stock. The ponderacio, or exaggeration, which is said to proverbially characterize the Andaluzes (and which, for example, is prone to announce its intentions as facts done), has not it must be confessed, suffered in the transplantation to this side of the Atlantic.

In illustration of what I have said on this topic, I will quote an extract from another letter, written shortly after the Expedition, (of date Nov. 7^th, 1851), by the gentleman once before referred to, Mr. De Gournay, who visited Havana and the Vuelta Abajo as confidential agent of General Lopez, a few week prior to his own intended coming. Mr. De Gournay was written to afterwards, by a friend of the General and himself at New York, for an explanation of the strangely falsified and exaggerated accounts which had been sent to the United States from Havana, in such modes as first to mislead, and afterwards to mortify excessively, the friends of the cause thus disgraced and injured. The following are the terms of Mr. De Gournay's reply to this inquiry:

" Your letter has made me sad; the same questions I have put to myself without being able to answer them. Shall we ever trace who were and who were not the traitors? Yet I have taken every possible step to get at the truth. All I can say about the rumors is that they were as current and credited in Havana as here. I cannot give a better illustration of the fact than by copying here an extract of a letter I wrote to Sigur on the 25^th August, and which I found in the post office on my return here, he not having probably remembered the supposed name to which I addressed my letter.

'I have seen yesterday (24^th) a gentleman arriving from the country. His plantation is close to the scene of war, and he gives me the following news. Colonel Elisalde's column attacked the patriots on the 21^st; but far from surprising them as reported. He has himself fallen in an ambush, has been completely routed, and has lost more men than either at Las Pozas or at the battle in which Enna was killed. General Lopez occupying the top of the mountain. It was impossible for the troops to retreat without a heavy loss, the roads being rendered impracticable by the late hurricane. The plains are inundated, the troops bivouac knee deep in the mud, and have lost all their stores and ammunition. Our General has kept an excellent position. The same person gives me confirmation of what I already wrote to you, that a great number of soldiers of Pinar del Rio have passed over; amongst others, some artillerymen with one of their mountain pieces. He further says that yesterday morning some 300 gujiaros have managed to join the General.' Now the person who gave me these was ------- -------, who was . . . . . Such news came daily. The Cascorro bulletin was published by a Cuban, who is a good patriot, but so anxious to serve the cause, that he is always getting up such publications as he thinks will help it. I only knew it was he lately. When the General arrived he published an order of the day or proclamation, purporting to be signed Narciso Lopez, and M. Tolon, secretary, in which the General was made to say that a force of 9,000 men would soon arrive, headed by Quitman, Lamar, Gonsalez and Macias, and such other nonsense. Although I did not know the man, I forbade him in my official capacity of aide to the General, and his representative, as proved by his own signed order, to publish anything, or use the General's name in any way without his authorization, and succeeded in preventing further mischief."

For the contrast between the picture drawn of the state of things at the scene of war, at the date in question, and the truth of it was, I need only refer to the past pages of the narrative. The same gentleman alluded to as the author of this specimen of the "ponderacio," had also before communicated to New York exaggerations no less great, in regard to the spreading of the Principe rising throughout all the towns of the Central Department. I course withhold his name, and also suppress some circumstances mentioned in connexion with it, which would serve to indicate it.

So much, the, for the conduct of the Creoles of Cuba. As to the conduct of the Spaniards in our little campaign, it was certainly such as to leave on our minds an unanimous feeling of contempt for their military capacity, mingled with disgust for their ferocity of character. The brutality with which they massacred our wounded left behind at Las Pozas--massacred and mutilated them--is not to be forgiven. I do not find so much fault with the execution of Crittenden and his men, because it is capable of being regarded rather in the light of a political stroke, than as a mere massacre for cruelty. It is not improbable that it saved, or at least materially contributed to save Cuba to Spain, for the year of our Lord 1851. Concha, it is said, gave the order for it with great reluctance, almost under compulsion from the Catalans at Havana. If the American Consul had lifted a finger to strengthen Concha's hands in his position of unwillingness, they would have been saved, or rather only one-fifth of their number would have been shot. But President Fillmore had utterly outlawed them, and the feeble Consul acted accordingly. The Catalans insisted, and Concha embittered, I strongly suspect, his own remaining days, by that hideous act; aggravated as it was by the disgusting scenes which ensued, enacted by the Spaniards in fitting emulation of brutality with the negro scum of the Havana rabble. Many Americans have found it impossible to believe that sickening story; but I know its truth from too many witnesses to be able to doubt. It is beyond question that shocking mutilations of the dead bodies were made, and the horrid trophies exultingly exhibited in the public places of Havana, even in such places as the chief Spanish fashionable resort for refreshments, ice cream, confectionery, etc.,--the well known "Dominica;"--a fact which carries quite high up, on the scale of Spanish society and civilization, the responsibility of this disgusting orgy of blood. And those who are familiar with the details of Spanish civil warfare know that there was nothing extraordinary in this. The cruel race still, at home, finds its transports of pleasure in bull-fights in proportion to their results in blood; the same race tramples, kicks, stabs, and drags by the heels through the streets, the palpitating bodies of obnoxious political opponents, as in the case of the gallant patriot Riego; and even delights, not alone in less disgusting mutilations, but even in those in regard to which description cannot follow perpetration. The worst of it is that these acts are not confined to the mere rabble. It will suffice to allude to the deaths of Quesada, at Madrid, and Vaza, at Barcelona, and various others, within the past fifteen years. I have heard Lopez say that there are great differences of character between different provinces of Spain, and that there are some in which, during the Carlist war, he had known the ferocity of hate and savage vengeance towards enemies actually not to stop short of cannibalism.

An English mob's cry, against an obnoxious political adversary, is never more than "Down with him!" A Spanish mob always calls for his blood, "Muera!" An American does neither; it gives him three derisive groans, and votes him out at the next election.

Every syllable of the story of the outrages perpetrated on the bodies of the poor fellows massacred under the walls of the Atares fort, was the truth; though great exertions were by the Cuban authorities to hush it up and smooth it over. And as they happened at the time to have the active co-operation of the whole Whig press in the United states, anxious to sustain the administration, and therefore to help the Spanish side of the Cuban question, with which side the administration had inseparably identified itself, it is not surprising that they have left on many minds the belief that because those stories were monstrous they were impossible. The great exaggeration, and in some cases pure invention, in the accounts sent forth from some Cuban quarters, at about the same period, concerning the Patriot operations, numbers and successes, growing out of Principe and Trinidad pronunciamentos, (under the gallant patriots and victims Joaquim Agero, and Isidoro Armenteros, with their respective companions in the field and on the scaffold,) have contributed to this effect. Nevertheless, in this matter, it is certain that there was neither invention nor material exaggeration. Abundant proof has attested it; including even Spanish testimony; and even if it had not been thus proved true, there would be enough in Spanish character, and modern Spanish history, to make it entirely probable, and what might well have been expected by any one familiar with the national character and the abounding precedents.

The four days indulto afforded to us may seem to some an act of clemency for which gratitude should be the becoming language, from one who experienced its benefit, so far at least as regards the sparing of life. But there were other evident reasons than benevolent ones for that act, and there is no place for benevolence in any estimate of Spanish motives, at least in connexion with Cuban affairs. The brutality of the subsequent treatment of the prisoners, until policy and fear unlocked their chains,⁽¹²⁾ gives the lie to any pretensions to clemency in the case. The Expedition was at an end, and dispersed. The useless cruelty and vindictiveness of the hunting of men to death in single chase in the woods and mountains, would have presented a spectacle too revolting for the world's endurance; especially for that portion of it lying a few miles to the northward. It was necessary, too, to do something to take off the edge of the horror of Atares. The news had already arrived of the great popular excitement which blazed up in New Orleans on the announcement of that event, and of the preparations instantly set on foot for sending a strong support to the Expedition in the Island. To hunt down to death the now dispersed survivors, would have raised a cry of To the Rescue! Weeks would have passed, months might, before all the American "game," abroad in the mountains, would have been brought down. Besides the danger of rescuing expeditions, it might have been afforded time for reaction among the Creole population of the Island. It would have kept smouldering on for weeks a fire which it was important to extinguish entirely as quick as possible. Nor was it wise to drive to individual desperation all these fugitives, who had already given such proofs of what they could do even without that stimulus of despair. How should the number of Spanish lives be counted which it was reasonable to presume it would cost to reduce them all, when each should be brought down to the desperate extreme point of selling his life as dearly as possible? The current estimate in Havana of the cost in troops at which our little Expedition was destroyed (an expedition which cannot be properly be said to have been 300 strong), was two thousand men, including the deaths after as well as on the battle field, the disabling wounds, the deaths from the consequences of fatigue and exposure, and the desertions. I have been assured by most respectable and intelligent gentlemen of Havana, that this was admitted by Spanish officers. Well, at this rate, the hunt of "Yankees" in the mountains would have been altogether too expensive a luxury to be much longer continued. Moreover, by means of the limited indulto, the disaffected and unreliable peasantry of the region were at once interested to an active, and really friendly, prosecution of the search for scattered expeditionaries, for the purpose of bringing them in for its benefit, instead of having a motive for concealing and aiding them; a process, too, by which the chances of securing the General's person were greatly increased. And the Cuba authorities felt the very coral-based soil of the Island insecure beneath their feet as long as Lopez was alive.

These were the merely politic motives of the indulto; and I am sure there are none among my comrades who, when they remembered the utter abominations of the subsequent treatment of the prisoners, and the bloody butcheries of the helpless wounded, as well as of unarmed captives, which had preceded, has any other sentiment in regard to the Spanish authorities in Cuba, than that which I am free to avow, namely, contempt, abhorrence, and a hearty desire to see them driven to the sea, from the Island on which their rotten tyranny is only a detested incubus; even though it should be necessary to pitch the last of them from the battlements of the Morro, into the perpetual surge which lashes its rocky base.

After all that had been passed through, it may seem a curious circumstance, but it is the fact, that as the different bodies of returned prisoners, (pardoned and released, from the motives of policy towards their several governments, especially the American,) arrived in the United States, there was scarcely one who did not express his most ardent wish to be to go back to Cuba, with about a couple thousand companions, and try it again.

I have now stated frankly and honestly my views of the causes of the failure of this unfortunate expedition; a well-meant, generous, and daring enterprise in its inception; and glorious enough, certainly, at least in the achievements of the fighting part of its execution,--as will not be disputed by foe or friend. I have aimed to write the truth of history; and therefore resign myself to the presumption that I must probably have offended more persons than I have pleased. Before concluding the reflections which have occupied the past dozen of my humble pages, this is the proper place to notice the charge of uncalculating rashness which has been made by many persons, on a superficial view of the affair, against General Lopez.

The charge is not well founded. Lopez was a leader of good military judgement, as well as a daring and enterprising soldier. He was destroyed, partly by a combination of unfortunate circumstances, but still more by the misconduct of others. His own plans were excellent; though bold, they were sound and sagacious; and it is certain that, had he been left free to execute them, they would have succeeded. I have already explained that the expedition with which landed was not the expedition projected by him. His intended expedition was that of which the Kentucky regiment was to constitute the main basis; while an essential part of his plan was the taking up the equipment, armament, &c., (including a fine battery of mountain howitzers and light artillery) which he had collected near the St. John's River, Florida. With that expedition, landing in the Central Department, he would undoubtedly have succeeded. But he was hurried off--forced off--prematurely by those accounts from the Island of the progress of the risings in the Central Department, near Puerto Principe and Trinidad, coupled with the special accounts sent him from his agents in the Vuelta Abajo, of all their extensive pledged preparations there.⁽¹³⁾ Very false representations were sent from the Island, as I have already explained, of the magnitude and successes of these movements in the Central Department; the mendacious exaggeration on the one side being fully equal to the mendacious depreciation on the other. Those premature risings, as I have already said, were not made in concert with the General, though they were made in reliance upon his prompt arrival to their support. They grew out of the impatience of the Patriots of that quarter, and their disappointment at the frustration of the General's former attempts to get off which they had seen made by the superserviceable zeal of Mr. Fillmore and his subordinates. They then determined to begin as they did; expecting to sustain themselves till he should arrive, and at the same time believing that that movement would help and facilitate his getting off. In this course, they acted on other advice and assurances than those derived from the General himself; who, having his own arrangements again combined for a departure by the middle of August, could only regret their derangement by a premature pronunciamento in Principe on the 4^th of July. This was the prime cause of all evil. Followed up by further errors and misfortunes of kindred character, it sacrificed the General, sacrificed the Expedition, sacrificed many brave Patriots in Cuba itself, sacrificed the revolution, and went far to sacrifice the Cuban character and credit in the estimation of the American people and the world. La Rochefoucauld says well, that it is astonishing how much power for mischief persons possess who possess so little for good. It is to be hoped that the terrible lessons on patriotic lying which have this been taught, will at least produce the effect, among the Cuban revolutionists, of making them frown indignantly into different behavior, the few individuals among their number, who may be chargeable with this heavy sin and grievous folly. I need not refer again to the disappointment of the General's reasonable reliance on reinforcements from New Orleans and the St. John's; nor to the high neutral authority already mentioned, to the effect that the arrival of such a reinforcement would have saved everything. He had, moreover, good grounds for expecting a prompt reinforcement from Texas also. I will only mention here that I do not believe there was the smallest foundation for the report which obtained some currency in the United States, that the General had been enticed to the Vuelta Abajo by the Captain-General, by false intelligence and treacherous invitations meeting him at Key West. How it all happened has, I think, been made pretty clear by the particulars which have been spread over the former parts of this Narrative. Various Spanish officers, ascending even to the rank of Colonel of a regiment, were indeed under pledges to join General Lopez; but such pledges necessarily implied the condition that it was to be done on a practicable opportunity, and with reasonable prospects. But the revolutionary impulse was more than half spent--nay, may be said to have been almost paralyzed---by the premature mismanagement in the Island itself, independent of the General, and more than a month in advance of his coming; and after it, affairs took such a direction of cumulative misfortune, that certainly no fair foundation appears for the suspicion that these officers were acting in profoundly treacherous concert with the Captain-General. It was other causes and other persons, that led him to land as he did at Morrillo, and then abandoned him to a fate which then, in spite of all that could be done by bravery, fortitude, perseverance and skill, was precipitated and aggravated, by a series of outside causes for which he (God bless his good heart and great memory!) was not responsible nor blameable, whether to the eye of God or to the judgment of just human reason.

But I fear I may have wearied the reader, (if any have favored me so far as to reach this expression of the apprehension), with the observations suggested to me by our arrival at this point of my Narrative. Though I have yet reached only the date of the 28^th of August, the day of my capture, we are already at the end of the history of the Expedition, as a military body or operation. It seemed not inappropriate at this point to present the remarks called for by my most hinest judgment in regard to the whole affair. I may have offended some,---friends as well as foes,---by some of the opinions I have expressed; but they must go for whatever may be their worth in the scales of historical truth and justice. If I had been led by them a little out of the strict order of time, it has simply been for the purpose of illustrating or confirming the general conclusions which suggested themselves at this point, by facts or circumstances of subsequent occurrence. Heretofore my personal narrative has necessarily been a history of our little campaign. Henceforth it must lose that claim on attention, and shrink down into much humbler individual pretensions to any degree of interest. Still, in our journey as prisoners to Havana---confinement there---voyage to Spain---the passage to Ceuta---experience and observations there---and final escape from it---I hope there may yet be found something to repay, in some slight degree, a little further kind attention, for only a few passages more, on the part of such readers as may possibly have accompanied me thus far.

When I dropped the thread of narrative which I now resume, we were at San Cristoval, on the evening of the 28^th, some sixty odd of our comrades having preceded us to Havana; and the General himself having been brought in a prisoner, and sent forward, with precautions against rescue, that same afternoon.

1. Perfectly brave and courageous as were that noble set of gentleman who constituted the officers of our little band (I have before named the only one of whom I would make an exception), their own want of military experience, combined with the utterly raw character of our force, and with the peculiar circumstances in which we were placed, to make it ver y difficult (perhaps it might have been to any men impossible) to exercise that kind of necessary ascendancy and control over their men, in which resides the tree life and power of military organization. No military force is worth much unless it is well in hand, and freely manageable and disposable to its chief, through the intermediate machinery of the officers, who constitute the reigns gathered and centralised in his supreme grasp. When the perpetual question present to a commander's mind is, not what ought to be and shall be done, but what will the men do, adieu to much hope of military efficiency! Vainly then, in war will Fortune offer her most smiling opportunities. Vainly did she offer them to us at Las Pozas; vainly at Frias. Astonishing victories both, but victories of mere defensive repulse, all their fruits as victories were thrown away, from the one sole cause that I have indicated. Possibly it might have been different, had General Lopez possessed the language of his little army; had Spanish been theirs, or English his.

2. It is a curious proof of the unprovided condition in which we had landed, that the men had unbullet screws to their muskets, and when a cartridge was dampened in the musket, it was next to impossible to get out. The equipment of the expedition was at the St. John's River; I have before explained how we came to land in the unprovided condition in which we were.

3. He wandered for about three weeks in the mountains, and was the last of the prisoners who gave themselves up. He did not reach Havana till after our departure for Spain. After remaining some months in the hospital, under the protection of the German residents of Havana, and experiencing much kindness from the Creoles of Havana, he was finally pardoned, released and sent to New York.

4. The return of Pampero, with the expected expedition from the St. John's River, was not the General's sole reliance. He expected a reinforcing expedition from New Orleans. I have not before mentioned, (and this would be a proper place to do so,) that General Lopez had made arrangements, when in New Orleans, by which a splendid regiment of six hundred Kentuckians and Indianians, under his gallant young friend Major Tho's. T. Hawkins, was to arrive in New Orleans about the time of his own departure. His own departure was precipitated by the accounts of the Principe and Trinidad rising; and instead of going with the force which had been thus organized for the Expedition, of the best possible materials; he left the latter to follow as a reinforcement, carrying with himself a body of men really raised within forty-eight hours in New Orleans. Hawkins, with Col. Pickett, reached New Orleans the day after our departure; and the men (nearly 700, all Kentuckians), arrived a few days after, on the evening of the 9^th, and the morning of the 10^th. The General's parting directions were, not to let Hawkins lose twenty-four hours in following. Pickett and Hawkins were all impatience to go; Hawkins generously resigning to his friend Pickett, the rank in it which was to have been his own. The original arrangement was that Crittenden was to command this regiment; but when the General's departure was precipitated by the accounts from Cuba, and he determined to convert this regiment into a reinforcement, instead of its being the first Expedition, Crittenden was not willing to be left behind, and hastily raised a small body of men, with the gallant Victor Kerr, and a few others of the flower of the young men of New Orleans, with whom he accompanied the General. The understanding then was that he would either have the command of a regiment of artillery, or else take that of the Kentucky regiment, which had been raised by Hawkins, under directions from the General, through Crittenden; and which was expected to follow close upon our heels. This was a most noble body of men--intelligent, steady, and reliable for anything; men from whom the strictness subordination and intelligent obedience could always have been looked for without fear of disappointment. We had a large infusion of men no whit[...] inferior in the expedition as it sailed, but it cannot be denied that a considerable proportion of the men suddenly improvised in the streets of New Orleans were hardly of the same stamp. Such men were these Kentuckians, that, during the riots which followed the news of the Atarea massacre, the city authorities of New Orleans actually committed chiefly to them the restoration and protection of the order of the city; by placing arms in the hands of 500 of them for that purpose, in preference to calling on their own militia. Their conduct merited and received the highest praises from all quarters. Intelligence and self respect supplied the place of disciplines and veteran troops could not have better obeyed and executed every order of their officers. If this regiment had been dispatched at once, according to the General's expectations, it could have landed within two, or, outside of three days after us. Affairs in New Orleans were in the hands of a large committee, which had been appointed at a mass meeting of citizens. Committees are apt to move slowly. Whether from hesitation in regard in responsibility, or from insufficiency of means, it is certain that the action of the committee did not respond to Pickett's and Hawkins's eagerness. Days lapsed when hours were important. There was too much waiting for news; and then for more news. Finally came the news that all was over, and that it was now too late. From the public excitement prevailing in New Orleans at the time of his departure, the General had every reason to expect that the Kentucky regiment, which was already on its way, would be promptly forwarded. He also left authority under Col. Wheat and Col. Bell were empowered to form other regiments; and among the three there were not less than two thousand men ready to follow us within a very short time after our departure. The Kentucky regiment raised by Hawkins was a picked body of men. His assurance is, as I have already said, that if they had been promptly forwarded they might have landed within two or three days of our landing. Their arrival would have changed the whole aspect of things in the Island. A very high and neutral authority, whose name would carried great were I liberty to use it, and who was in Havana at the time, as declared his conviction that the landing of a reinforcement of three or four hundred men, at anytime within a week after the General, would have decided his success; such was the state of feeling there. The same intelligent and well-informed gentleman (neither an American or a Creole, has also declared his belief that, even as it was, Lopez would have succeeded, if his force would have been better armed and munitioned; the rain having, in point of fact, destroyed him. When Hawkins was applying for conveyance, a steamer was offered to the committee. Whether it was that zealous efforts could not raise, among the citizens of New Orleans, the sum needed to guaranty her safety, or that there was hesitation, and want of energy and promptness in the efforts made, I cannot say; but it seems wonderful that there could be have been any difficulty, in the midst of such a public sentiment as then existed in New Orleans, in at once despatching at least the Kentucky regiment. Had it been done, Cuba would have been a free and independent Republic long before this day, and Lopez of this hour her Liberator instead of her Martyr.

5. I will here mention a circumstance of which I have been informed since I have arrived in New York. Either it occurred after my separation from General Lopez, or else the General did not mention it to me. The individual who did what I refer to, is himself my authority, but prudence does not permit me to name him. His statement is as follows:--Being particularly adapted for the enterprise, he was sent out form Havana, by a wealthy Creole gentleman, after the loss of hope in regard to the Expedition, for the purpose of saving General Lopez. He had a suitable companion with him, and he was to go to a certain estate in the region where the General was hemmed round by the troops, and there get a particularly fine horse. He was furnished, before setting out, with a letter, sealed, and properly addressed to the Captain General, appearing to be a dispatch from the scene of operations. He was also to carry a razor and clothes, to change the appearance of the General. He was to get two or three other reliable comrades, one of them mounted on the horse destined for the General. They were then to make their way to him, as their habits and knowledge of the country would enable them to do, and, after finding him, bring him along with them straight to Havana, as an express carrying an important dispatch to the Captain General. Such expresses were constantly passing to the government at Havana. There would then have been no difficulty in concealing and embarking him to a place of safety. My informant states that the whole was executed accordingly; that he had an interview with the General in the mountains, and told him who had sent him, and what he had come for; that all was lost for this time, but that his life would be indispensable for the future. The General answered, that it was a perfectly arranged plan, and would be no doubt perfectly easy and safe in what remained of its execution, but that he would never abandon his followers in their present situation. If they could not triumph together, he would die with them; and that probably his life would, in the last resort, pay a sufficient penalty, so as to mitigate the consequences to the rest. He thanked the friends who had taken this step, but had no other answer than this to send back. My informant, the individual himself who undertook and executed this commission, is at present in New York.

6. The Palmitas I refer to are what may be called infant palm-trees, of the height from four to six feet. We would cut them down close to the ground, and then cut off about three feet of the stem. The outer rind, or what may be called bark, then readily shelled off, with more or fewer folds according to the age of the plant, till we reached a sort of pulpy pith at the heart of it, an inch and a-half thick. This was white and juicy, very light, had a pleasant sweetness, and afforded some small nourishment. Some were yellowish and a little bitter; probably plants not in perfect health. When the tree had gone beyond what I call its infancy, the pulp, or palmito, was dry and difficult to get at, from the thickness and hardness of the stem of the tree, and the height at which from the softer part was to be found.

7. Poor fellow, he was afterwards taken to Matanzas, to his old regiment, denied the benefit of the general indulto, and shot for desertion. He was a brave and good fellow, and always said that the soldiers of his regiment (Leon, I believe) and he believed those of many other regiments in the Island, would be glad to join Lopez whenever they had a fair chance.

It may not be without interest to induce here a letter publish in New Orleans by these soldiers of the Cardenas garrison, who joined General Lopez after being taken prisoner, including their sergeant, Miguel Lopez, above named. About a dozen of them return in our Expedition. The rest had dropped off in the course of the year, as they found attractive situations or employment, the General having much pecuniary difficulty in supporting them in the protracted interval between the two Expeditions. The letter is not without significance, in the illustration it affords of the disposition of the Spanish soldiers, at least in some of the regiments. [The few prisoners we took also joined the General readily, and served as faithfully through our subsequent hardships as any of the rest of our men; though certainly there was nothing to prevent any of them from quitting us any day. The General always expressed himself confident that all prisoners taken, after being spoken to by him, would act precisely in that manner; and though desertion was not to be expected till we should be in a position sufficiently imposing to promise safety in the act, that so soon as that should be the case, and that the desertion to us should commence, it would then become large and serious. The New Orleans Spanish paper La Patria, having published a statement that these Cardenas soldiers had been brought off by force, they published this letter in contradiction of it:--

To the Editors of La Patria.

In view of the errors respecting our position contained in the supplement to your paper which you thought proper to publish yesterday, we feel bound, in justice to our General, Don Narciso Lopez, and to what, as true Spaniards, we owe to the truth, to make the following declaration.

When the Governor Ceruti surrendered at Cardenas, with us under his command, General Lopez left us at complete liberty; in accordance with which, as soon as we knew him and his object, we offered to follow and accompany him to the death in his sacred enterprise. Thus it was that we, thereupon, tore off our uniforms, and put on (not at the present time as you state) the red shirt with the white star, which we have preserved, and took our place in the patriotic ranks. At liberty from ten o'clock of the morning of the 10^th of May, and with our arms, which General Lopez left in our hands, we could easily, had such been our desire, have returned to the yoke of the Government of Cuba; but on the contrary, after having walked about the two of Cardenas during the day in the uniform of the Expeditionaires; at the call of the trumpet we were all gathered in the afternoon, without the failure of a single one, by the side of our General. Governor Ceruti and the officers who were prisoners are the best witnesses of all this.

We are not prisoners, nor have we been brought here by force, as you would make it appear. We were free in Cardenas--free on board the Creole--free in Key West before and after our General=s departure from that place--free and alone we went from their to Tampa--free we remained in Tampa--free and alone we came to New Orleans--free we are and thank God and the humanity of General Lopez, we are free "to-day," and intend to remain so for the rest of our days, which we will endeavor to employ for the benefit of those who do not enjoy so great a blessing, and particularly of our brethren and comrades in arms so barbarously oppressed in Cuba.

We, therefore, have no desire to attack ourselves to the Spanish flag as you suggest to us, and as we were yesterday urged to do with enticing promises, by the Spanish Consul, and the individual who accompanied him, who certainly were not left very well pleased with what they heard from our own lips. The flag of the United States suffices for us, Messrs, Editors, until on the soil of Cuba shall float that of the single star which we have sworn to establish there, whenever the chief of our choice, the republican General Don Narciso Lopez, shall think proper to lead us to that enterprise.

Juan Rodriguez, Jacinto Gaite, Felipe Roman, Felipe Merino, Francisco Iglesias, Francisco Sanz, Juan Lopez, Antonio Valdespino, Miguel Ancejo, Francisco Grau, Pedro Almerillo, Manuel Silva, Jose Estevez, Jose Ronquillo, Carlos Alandes, Tomas Yanez, Miguel Lopez, Manuel Coya, Ambrosio Castono, Andres Lestar, Luis Vinas, Felip Saine, Luis Villarino, Manuel Barrere, Juan Sanderra.

8. In point of fact the band by which they were captured, was under the command of either a lieutenant, or, a lieutenant-governor, because one of them, who directed the party, was addressed as "Teniente," (lieutenant). Castañeda (a Canarian,) who has been represented as the General's captor, and rewarded as such, was neither the leader of this band, nor a Creole, as was untruly represented afterwards by the government for effect. This evil celebrity, though it got him money and Spanish honors at the time, is said to have cost him his life since. Recent letters from Cuba report that he has been found killed. I had before heard that many Creoles had sworn to kill him on the first opportunity.

9. It is not inappropriate, and will be interesting to many. For me to insert he (extracted from the newspapers of the time) the following speeches made to and by General Lopez, in August, 1850; just a year before these events, and shortly after the failure of the Cardenas Expedition, on the occasion of the presentation of a flag, embroidered by Cuban ladies in New York, and a sword presented by Cuban refugees in that city. I do so chiefly on account of the sentence which I italicise in the General's reply to the speech accompanying the presentation; which was made by a committee consisting of Messrs. M. T. Tolon, G. Agramonte, M. de Aguero, and C. Villaverde. The passage alluded to acquires a deeper interest when read by the light of the heroic fulfilment of its pledge, just about one year afterwards.

"General,--A large number of Cubans resident in New York, have done us the honor to commission us to present you this Sword, together with this Flag, wrought by the fair hands of some beautiful daughters of Cuba, to whom that task has been a labor of love. Accept, General, this proof of gratitude and sympathy for your exertions and sacrifices in behalf of our beloved country, and of the confidence and trust reposed in you, as the instrument which Providence seems to have designated to carry into effect that political revolution which will bring in its train Liberty, Peace and Prosperity, to the unfortunate inhabitants of Cuba.

"As one symbolizes the nationality of Cuba free, independent, and happy, as she ought to be and shall be, so does the other represent the sole means by which an enslaved people can break the yoke of a foreign despotism. The noble devotion of Cuban patriotism already shown by you marks you as the man worthy of raising aloft that Flag, and bearing it along the path of glory to a certain triumph; and the heroic personal valor of which you have given to history so many proofs, assures us that the Sword can never be wielded by a hand worthier or braver.

"We know, General, all the particulars of your late attempt to begin the revolution on the soil of Cuba. We understand well all the importance of surprising Matanzas by landing at Cardenas; and we know, too, that so admirable a combination failed by reason of one of those casualities which often disconcert the most brilliant of military plans. Nothing occurred which could impair the confidence of the intelligent, nor occasion the censure of the just, whether in regard to your capacity as a leader, to your valor as a soldier, or to your popularity and influence over the people, and even the Spanish troops themselves, in Cuba,--troops which only resisted only the rigor and habit of military discipline, and in ignorance of the cause and of the chief they were opposing; and that chief, as soon as the deception was removed under which they were during the combat of that night. We know also, that your operations were interrupted and frustrated by the drawing back of a portion of your volunteers, who not only refused to follow you, after having been triumphant in Cardenas, insisted on being carried to Key West, contrary to your express orders, but also disregarded your entreaties that you yourself might be landed at any point of the island, with those who wished to accompany you. But while we deplore with you so unfortunate a mischance, we believe that no other evil has resulted from it but the delay, for a few days, of the inevitable Cuba revolution. It is needless, however, to speak of the past, and still more needless to remind you of the grave duties you have yet to accomplish. Cuba expects it all from you. You know it; and convinced as we are of your indomitable energy, perseverance, and resolution, as well as of you experience and knowledge of the elements which exist in Cuba for an immediate and happy revolution, nothing more remains for us, General, than to await, however impatient, the moment when you may invite us to the field of battle, to conquer or to die, as worthy sons of Cuba, under the shadow of that flag.

"In the Sword we have respected the desire expressed by yourself, on being informed of the step about to be taken by the Cuban patriots resident in New York, Philadelphia, and Boston, and we present it to you, such as should be the sword destined to sever the chains which, for over three centuries, have fettered our brethren of Cuba,--a sword, General, extremely simple in adornment, but formidable by its tried and tempered steel, when wielded by the strong arm which is to aim it against the very heart of tyranny,--a sword whose motto expresses that it is by means of it that peace and happiness must be sought beneath the shadow of liberty:

"General:--Wherever you may go, you will be followed by our prayers and our hearts, glowing with the sacred fire of love of country and liberty; and while we all persist in the noble purpose we are proud to avow, without violating the laws of this country, whose example has inspired and determined us, we entreat you to carry with you the assurance that as soon as you shall raise in Cuba the cry of liberty, and give to the wind the Cuban flag on her own scores, you shall find by your side no inconsiderable number of Cubans resident in the United States; and, with the blessing of God upon the most sacred cause for which the sword is ever unsheathed, we trust that they will not show themselves unworthy of their country and their chief."

To which General Lopez made the following answer:--

"Gentleman:--From the bottom of my heart I thank the beautiful daughters of Cuba and the worthy compatriots whom you represent, for these united testimonials of their sympathy and confidence; though every personal feeling is at this moment absorbed in the in the greater pleasure with which I witness this evidence of patriotism, courage, perseverance and union. In entertaining these sentiments, I am, moreover, well satisfied that you correctly represent the general population of our country, since I have received from there numerous and reliable assurances which do not permit me to doubt that an accidental reverse, far from disheartening the people, has but augmented their ardor, and has served to carry far forward the cause of the revolution; a progress cheaply purchased for Cuba by greater sacrifices than it has cost, (not only to ourselves but also to many of the noblest spirits of this country who bore an honorable part in the enterprise,) by more blood than may have been shed, and by all the grief it may have cost us to see her left still in her chains when we held her liberty almost in our very grasp.

"Revolutions are epochs of trial to the temper of the souls that aspire to be free, and to give freedom to their country; those who take part in them must not only be content to pass through the dark and painful hours of the night before they can hail the impatiently awaited sun; but they must resign themselves too, to endure, in noble silence, until success has stamped the seal of glory upon their work, the calumnies of enemies, the coldness of alien sympathies, and the hostility of that anti-popular party, which has a common existence, and a common character in all countries and under all forms of government. But all this is easily borne by the pure conscience, the confident hope, and the resolute will of patriotism; that patriotism which is now our common principle of action, and the bond of our cordial union.

"This flag shall be the regimental flag of the first body that shall be organised on our country's soil, which shall bear the proud name of the regiment of "The Daughters of Cuba." It shall wave above the Morro, or it shall be my winding-sheet, in a Cuban grave, which shall then serve but to mark another step in the onward march of the revolution you justly call inevitable.

"I thank you, too, gentleman, for your attention to my desire that all the glitter of this noble weapon should be found on its blade, and that the cost of any superfluous ornament should rather be applied for the benefit of those brave Spanish soldiers who, with so much enthusiasm, voluntarily joined our ranks as soon as they knew who we were, and what our object. A sword of service, of a republican simplicity, but strong in its steel for the overthrow of tyranny, is indeed the only one befitting the time, or which would be acceptable to my own feelings. In the spirit of its motto, I say, God speed the hour when, after that liberty and tranquil happiness shall be secured to Cuba which the sword alone can achieve, it may be converted into the ploughshare of peace."

The flag here referred to was captured with the baggage left in charge of Crittenden, so that we afterwards had, in point of fact, no flag in our subsequent battles and marches. The sword, with some other effects of the General, were in the hands of Sanchez Yznaga, waiting the General's coming to the St. John's, in Florida. Consequently, it never went to Cuba at all. It is now in the possession of Mr. O'Sullivan, in New York, awaiting the period proper for its presentation to the Republic of Cuba.

10. So far as this impression may seem to imply a "mistaken plan" on the part of the General in the separation, it is founded on the want of exact knowledge of the particulars, which have not indeed been published (so far as know) before their publication in this narrative. It was a misfortune, of which the General was indeed the victim, but which was in no respect any fault or mistake of plan on his part.

11. These are not, of course, the initials of the names, which it would be improper for me now to indicate.

12. A sufficient evidence of this is seen in the fact, small in itself but characteristically ignoble and cruel, that while all the foreign Expeditionaries, of every other nationality, were promptly liberated, the Americans, English, French, Germans, even a Pole, and even a Venezuelan, (the General's nephew), as acts of compliment to their respective governments, a few of my poor Hungarian countrymen are retained in that wretched captivity of Ceuta. This is a profound meanness in this distinction thus kept up against these poor fellows, whose lot is aggravated by the contrast with all their more favored comrades. The Austrian minister at Madrid rather preferred that they should be kept in prison, and under hard treatment at that. Hence the difference. There was no government to flatter in this case, by the politic pardon of its subjects or citizens. Neither mercy or generosity had anything to do with the motives which caused the liberation of the rest. The Cuban prisoners are also retained at Ceuta. No complaint can be made of this, in reference to the Spanish point of view of their case. But in regard to the poor Hungarians (in whom, even in Spanish eyes, it was surely rather more pardonable at that time, that they should engage in an enterprise of this kind, than on the part of any other class of foreigners). What, I repeat, can exceed in cold-hearted meanness this protracted imprisonment of four or five of them alone, at Ceuta, after the liberation of all the rest?

13. I an induced to insert here a few words from a very late letter of Mr. Sigur (now at Nicaragua) to a confidential friend, who had inquired about the General's latest communications from the Island; the letter from which I make the extract having been received just as the proof-sheets of these pages are passing through the press. The names suppressed are very responsible ones:

^{"His later communications from the island were from -------- and --------. The former nad others who assumed to speak for the Principenos, assured the General that these latter called only for leaders; that if he could land alone, with a few Hungarian officers, the results were certain. A few days before departure of the expedition, he received a letter from -------- --------, urging him to hasten to the assistance of the Principenos, with or without American auxiliaries; that these were not wanted; that he and a few Hungarian officers were alone called for by the Patriots of the Central Department. On the other hand, -------- was less sanguine. He advised the General not to come with less than five hundred well-appointed men, but he greatly misrepresented (of course unintentionally) the situation of the Vuelta Abajo, and urged the General to land there; nay, if I recollect right, he urged Mantua, or some point in its immediate neighborhood, as the most eligible. De Gournay's communications were to the same effect, and I have reason to believe that they were approved by --------."}