THE SPANISH-AMERICAN WAR. 398 On the 29th of the same month two of the auxiliary cruisers engagedin theCuban blockade shelled and drove back into the interior a squadron of Spanish cavalry that was seen to be patrolling the coast at some distance from Havana. On the 30th three small auxiliarycruisers attacked Manzanillo. It was not believed that the Spaniards had any naval force in the port, except, perhaps, one of the small gunboats or large steamlaunches that they had used for patrolling along the coast in the days of the filibustering expeditions before the war. But when the Americans steamed in, they had to face the fire of five gunboats, an old hulk fitted as a floating battery, and two batteries on the shore. After a brief engagement, the attack had to be abandoned, one of the cruisers being so badly hit that she had to be towed out of action.

getting the fires extinguished, and landed the guns from the gunboats to strengthen the shore Iitteries of the little port.

On the 2ist four American warships— the cruisers Topeka, Annapolis, Leyden and Wasp— steamed into the bay of Nipe,on the north coast of Cuba, near the eastern end of the island. The town was defended by three land batteries and theSpanish gunboX.JorgeJuan. TheJorge Juan engaged the Topeka,but was riddled with shells and sunk in twenty minutes after the first shot. The three other ships silenced the batteries, and the Spanish garrison abandoned the town.

Meanwhile Guantanamo and Caimamera had surrendered, a garrison of 6,000 men, included in the Santiago capitulation, laying down their arms. The American Government had invited tendersfor the transportof theSpanishgarrisons across the Atlantic. Curiously enough, the tender accepted came from the agents of the Spanish TransatlanticNavigationCompany, the same that owned the Alfonso XII., the Villa de Cadiz, and several other liners that had been armed as auxiliary cruisers by the Spanish Government during the war. It was a strange situation. The United States Government was paying the company, composed of men who were officially and legally its enemies, for carrying back Spanish soldiers to Spain in Spanish ships,out of some of which the guns and other war material had to be taken to convert back again fromwar cruisers intopeaceful liners.

On July 5th the Spanish armed liner Alfonso XII. was sighted by the blockading squadron off Havana, about eight miles from the entrance to the harbour. Three ships gave chase to her, and she headed to the westward, making for Port Mariel, where she hoped to find shelter under the protection of the harbour batteries. She verynearly escaped. But just outside the port she ran aground,and the pursuers closed in upon her and poured such a shower of shells into her that she was soon ablaze. A force of infantry and artillery came out from Marieland succeeded in rescuing her crew and saving a small portionof her cargo ofmilitarystores.

A week later another Spanish liner, the San Domingo, was chasedby an American cruiser to the south of the Isle of Pines. She was trying to reach Batabano, the little port on the south coast by whichsupplies were so often sent into Havana. The liner was driven ashore near the south-east point of the island and destroyed. In the same week two or three small craft, flying British colours, but laden with supplies for the Spaniards, were picked up by the blockading squadron on the south side of Cuba.

An attempt to land a small Cuban force with ammunition for the insurgents in the Santa Clara province was repulsedby the Spaniards at Tayabacoa on July 12th.

Amoreseriousquestion was that of the return to the States of the troops who had captured Santiago. GeneralShafter's army,largely composed of regular regiments, would, if the war continued,have to be employed in the invasion of theHavana province in the coming autumn. Ifit wereleft camped in the east of Cuba for the rest of the rainy season, the only possible result would be its complete destruction. Already it wasin a pitiful condition. Yellowfever, happily in a mild form, wasrife in the camps And no properprovisiota hadbeen made for dealingwith the epidemic. The soundest policy would have been to move the troops at once into healthy isolated camps on the Americanseaboajd,leaving the black battalions and the recently instituted corps of " immunes " (men who had had the fever in the south and were proof against a second attack) to garrison Santiago. But the Government hesitated and wasted time while the evil increased from day to day.

On the 15th the American cruiser Annapolis shelled the batteries at Baracoa. On the 18th the American gunboats and auxiliary cruisers again attackedManzanillo. Their shells set fire to four of the vessels in the harbour ;and they then retired, without attempting to silence the land defences. The Spaniards succeeded in A report from Dr. Nicholas Senn, the chief