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MY RIDE ACROSS CUBA.

BY LIEUTENANT-COLONEL ANDREW S. ROWAN.

THE STORY OF A SECRET MISSION TO THE CUBAN LEADERS.

EDITOR'S NOTE: When war was declared against Spain in April last, the War Department decided to send an agent to General García, to ascertain what coöperation might be expected from the insurgents, in case we should invade Cuba. The man chosen for this mission was Lieutenant Andrew S. Rowan, a Virginian, a graduate of West Point in the class of 1881, at this time employed in the Military Information Bureau of the War Department. In the following article he himself tells the story of his journey. The narrative is the simple, straightforward one of a man who is unconscious that he has done anything remarkable, and one to whom daring and hardship are matters of course when they are necessary to the discharge of a duty. The reader, however, cannot forget that from the moment he left Jamaica on April 23d until he arrived in Key West on May 11th, he was exposed to all the dangers which a state of war brings the despatch-bearer who ventures into the enemy's territory. Sleeping on stone ballast in the bottom of an open boat, climbing on foot through thickets, riding fifty miles and more a day over abandoned roads or through unbroken forests, stopping only when preparation for continuing the trip required it, exposed to wind and sun and waves for two days in a boat so small that the occupants were forced to sit upright in it, forced on land and sea to keep continually on the alert for a watchful enemy-these are the experiences which Lieutenant Rowan dismisses as mere incidents. After receiving Lieutenant Rowan's report, Major-General Miles wrote to the Secretary of War: "I also recommend that First Lieutenant Andrew S. Rowan, 19th U. S. Infantry, be made a lieutenant-colonel of one of the regiments of immunes. Lieutenant Rowan made a journey across Cuba, was with the insurgent army under LieutenantGeneral García, and brought most important and valuable information to the government. This was a most perilous undertaking, and in my judgment Lieutenant Rowan performed an act of heroism and cool daring that has rarely been excelled in the annals of warfare."

UPON the outbreak of hostilities with noon on Saturday, April 23, 1898, I reached Spain, I was the instrument chosen by No. East Queen Street, Kingston, Jamaica, the War Department for learning more of the where I placed myself in the hands of unmilitary possibilities of eastern Cuba. At known friends. Three hours later a four

we

Again on the road, the horses raced along at a steady pace until sometime after midnight, when we were halted by whistle signals in a field of sugar cane. Here we left

seated carriage, drawn by two small Jamaica than almost any other Cuban I had seen-a horses, was driven rapidly up to the door. tall, wiry, determined man, with a fierce, The moment I entered, the negro driver drooping mustache, that gave him the aspect leaned forward, plying his whip, and we of a Caribbean pirate. whirled furiously through the narrow streets and out the Spanish Town road. Four miles from the city we stopped with a jolt in the midst of a dense tropical forest. A second carriage, containing four men, came up in a cloud of dust, wheeled out, and passed us. My driver whipped his reeking horses and followed closely. In this way raced up the beautiful tropical valley of the Cobra River and came at dusk to Bog Walk, near which we halted for a few moments for food and a change of horses, and then drove onward again at the same killing pace. During all of this time no one had spoken a word to me and I had presumed to ask no questions.

It must have been nearly ten o'clock that night when both carriages drew suddenly to a standstill. It was dark and hot and breathlessly silent. From the jungle came presently a shrill whistle. Men appeared in the mid

LIEUTENANT-COLONEL ANDREW S. ROWAN.

From a photograph taken especially for McCLURE'S MAGAZINE by Frances B. Johnston.

dle of the road. There was a short whispered parley, and then we entered our carriages again and the journey was continued, now not quite so furiously. An hour later we halted at a little shack-like farmhouse, where supper awaited us. After a glass of rum all around, I was introduced to one Gervacio Sabio, a commandante of the Cuban navy, who was charged with my safe delivery into the hands of General Calixto García. Gervacio was much lighter in complexion

our carriages. A walk of a mile brought us to a grove of coca palms, bordering a pretty little bay. Fifty yards out on the water a small fishing - smack lay dim and silent. Although we made no sound, a light flashed out for a single instant on the boat. Gervacio, the pirate, grunted his satisfaction and answered the signal.

In a hoarse whisper Gervacio impressed upon me the great necessity of caution. When we had escaped the Jamaican authorities the Cuban coast lay a hundred miles to the north. It was patrolled night and day by the Spanish lanchas or coast-guard boats. If we were signaled by one of these sentinel ships we were to hoist French flag and lie flat in the bottom of our boat.

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the

If the Spaniards were still suspicious and insisted on running alongside, we were to rise at a signal and give them a volley. Perhaps we might drive them off; if not, we knew our fate. My companions were filibusters and I was a spy. And thus, with Gervacio swearing solemnly that he and his men would stand by the "Americano," I climbed on the moist shoulders of a Cuban sailor and was borne out through the surf.

A gentle breeze caught our sails, and the

little craft cut her way smoothly outward through the phosphorescent sea with the stars of an unfamiliar sky shining above us. About three o'clock in the morning, I crawled under the seat among the ballast bowlders and went to sleep. When I awakened, the sun was shining hotly over the gunwale. The Cubans showed their white teeth with a "Buenos dias, Meester Rowan," and we began another day of converting time into distance.

About four o'clock in the afternoon the clouds which had walled in the north broke away, and the towering peaks of eastern Cuba stood forth in the sunshine. Fearing that we were nearing the coast too rapidly, Gervacio ordered the mainsail furled, and we began to teeter along under a patch of a jib. It seemed hardly a dozen miles across the glaring water to the shore, but it was not until nearly midnight that the sailors began to take soundings. Gervacio had figured out the time-table of the lanchas very closely, and yet we crept in as stealthily as a red Indian, Gervacio's gaunt form looming high at the stern and his keen eye sweeping the horizon for the sight of a sail. A coral reef here parallels the shore, but with the pirate at the helm and full sail set we swept in upon a long roller from the open sea, leaped it gracefully, and dropped into the quiet water beyond.

opinion; and I slept as soundly as any of the others.

With the coming of daylight I found that we were in a moon-shaped inlet between two small headlands in the district of Portillo. Above, the sun was rising gloriously behind El Turquino-the highest peak in all Cubaand below, near the shore, rose a riotous wall of tangled grape, mangrove, and cactus,

defended from the sea by a sandy rampart against which the water broke in long, lapping swells. In all probability I never shall look on a scene of more entrancing beauty.

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A ragged Cuban appeared presently on shore, and faces could be seen peering from the jungle. Signals passed back and forth. We pressed forward until the keel of our boat snubbed in the sand, and then I rode ashore on my sailor's shoulders. A half naked Cuban lad, with two terrible scars in his breast, the marks of Spanish Mauser bullets, led the way into the thicket. Here I saw some interesting salinas, crude arrangements for obtaining salt by the evaporation of sea water. Cut off from supplies from the outside world, the Cuban army has been provided with salt in this poor way for years.

COLONEL CARLOS HERNANDEZ, CHIEF OF STAFF TO GENERAL COLLAZO, AND ONE OF THE PARTY THAT ACCOMPANIED LIEUTENANT ROWAN THROUGH THE LATTER HALF OF HIS JOURNEY.

From a photograph taken especially for McCLURE'S MAGAZINE by Frances B. Johnston.

Within our reef-protected bay we felt quite secure from any Spanish lancha. Indeed, so confident was our commander that he drew up within fifty yards of the shore and dropped anchor for the night. This arrangement was scarcely to my liking. I deemed it dangerous, but I risked no expression of

Such a spot as this offered no pleasant landing nor camping ground for an invading army. The coast is fringed with a marshlike coral reef of variable width, averaging probably three miles. This is pitted with small holes and marked with sharp hummocks, making traveling slow and difficult. Upon the porous coral grows an almost impenetrable tangle of small hard-wood trees, infinite in variety and rooted in an inch or two of vegetable mold. Through this jungle

we fought our way, stopping, when we could the district of Pilon and had begun to climb no longer bear the heat and fatigue, to re- the mountains. Here I got some of the best fresh ourselves with the delicious water views of my trip, and I formed a good idea drawn from green cocoanuts. At last we of what the country would offer to an invadpassed the coral thicket and came out into a ing army. All around me rose great rounded superb forest that needed but the touch of peaks, covered to the top with jungles of the farm implement to transform it into a verdure. Flocks of saucy parrots disputed blooming garden. Still with our faces to garrulously our right of thoroughfare. Trailthe north, we cautiously crossed the road ing vines hung above us and around us in fesfrom Santiago de Cuba, and plunged into the thorn and cactus thicket beyond, where even a Spanish guerrilla would not dare to follow.

Six miles from the coast we reached the foothills of the Sierras -verdure-clad hills that, I was told, were teeming with the families of the Cuban soldiers, who had been driven from their homes by the reconcentrado edict. Here, in inaccessible heights, I saw patches of sweet potatoes and other vegetables, which in this land of magic sunshine sprout today and to-morrow are ready for eating.

toons, intermingled with strange trees, making a thicket through which rabbit scarce could find a passage. And yet my Cuban guides knew every turn of the blind trail, and I ceased to wonder at their success in eluding and vanquishing the Spanish soldiery.

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The next day our horses slid down the slippery sides of a score of ravines. The ascents were not so easy, and I felt sorry for the sore backs of the poor beasts. Nearly all of the horses that I saw in Cuba were saddle-galled, but they bore it with as little complaint as the Cuban soldier bears his hunger. The beds of streams I found as a rule strewn with boulders, although Cuba is freer from stones than any other mountainous section of the world that I have visited. The long dry season had lasted for months, yet the streams still held water in pools. A few months later, with the advent of the rainy season, they would become roaring torrents, impassable even to small parties of men.

GENERAL ENRIQUE COLLAZO, THE CUBAN GENERAL WHO
ACCOMPANIED LIEUTENANT ROWAN ON HIS RETURN
FROM CUBA.

We had a practi-
cal lesson of the
Cuban method of
feeding an army.
At convenient
points along the path stood little thatched
sheds, each with a smoldering camp-fire just
in front. An aged Cuban man, or a woman
with little naked children, stood guard. As
the ragged soldiers pass along, the hungry
ones rake sweet potatoes from the ashes,
shuck off the skins, and eat them while they
march. There is never a failure in the sup-
ply, never a time when the desperately poor
wives and old fathers and little children in
the hills cannot raise and roast enough
potatoes to feed these ragged fighters for
a desperate cause.

From a photograph taken especially for MCCLURE'S MAGAZINE
by Frances B. Johnston.

On the morning of April 27th, we were in

We were now beyond the Sierras, and about sunset we halted before a thatched shed called Jíbaro. Here we partook of a meal which introduced several dishes new to me, and all poorly suited to my appetite. The remains of a beef newly killed, its dismembered parts hanging from the joists and drip

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marked that his information was two days old, but that he would despatch his agents at once to bring his data up to date, and that by the day after to-morrow I should have the plans and figures that I wanted.

In the field here, among the forest fastnesses, the Cubans publish certain tri-weekly papers, the organs of the insurgent party. The editor of one, a successor of Masó, the President of the Republic, was introduced to me by General Ríos.

ping blood on the earth floor, made me affect light-house at Cabo Cruz. He naïvely rean air of unconcern I did not feel. While we were still at supper I heard a furious clattering of horses' hoofs and a shout from the Cuban outposts at the edge of the forest. We all went tumbling out together. A Cuban officer and his staff dashed up to the door and dismounted. I was at once presented to a young and vigorous looking man who proved to be Lieutenant-Colonel Castillo, of the staff of General Ríos. After a short consultation, Colonel Castillo left us as suddenly as he came, and the next day General Ríos appeared. My meetings with these officers were cordial, and they treated me with unvarying kindness. General Ríos is the "General of The Coasts" of this part of Cuba. He is a cross between a Cuban and an Indian, and consequently very dark; but his fine facial angle and thin lips at once indicate that his color is a mere incident. He is fifty-five years of age, erect of stature, his beard cut a la Napoleon III., and his movements quick, athletic, tiger-like. He must have proved a very unwelcome foe to old Spain. His district of The Coasts, as I had reason to know, was in perfect order. I had a long talk with him concerning conditions in Media Luna, Manzanillo, and at the

Our mounts ready, General Ríos turned over to me an escort of several hundred cavalry, and we took up the road to El Chino, riding down the gentle slopes of the Cauto valley. Here for the first time I found a field for the cavalry and artillery, although the intersecting watercourses, with their fringe of jungle, would still leave to the infantry the brunt of battle. The ever faithful island of Cuba, the Pearl of the Antilles, and the fairest land that eyes have ever seen, is also the land par excellence for infantry. This let us not forget.

General Ríos left us at El Chino, where he received a large consignment of cattle from Camaguey (Puerto Príncipe). My guide from this point was Lieutenant Dionisio

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