López, a coal black negro whose knowledge of the roads and country we were to traverse was perfect. We crossed the Sierra Maestro on the north side of the Convento Mulato, a small rounded elevation mostly free from timber, upon the top of which I saw an observation or lookout station of the insurgents. It was a high, rude tower, with a platform near the top, covered with palm leaves. In this high perch the insurgent sentinel sat watching. At some of these lookouts we were challenged, at others we were permitted to pass without question. Our new guide was a hard rider, but he knew the best camps. The second night we camped at Buey Arriba (marked on the map Limonar), about twenty miles south of Bayamo. This was the best and most beautiful camp I made in Cuba. Our escort put up some shelters, covered them with banana leaves, and stretched our hammocks beneath them. The next morning we started at sunrise, and for two hours our ride was through a most charming country. At Candelaria we passed the only house (and that a very small one, and burned, too) I had seen during a ride of

a hundred miles. We rode through fields GENERAL CALIXTO GARCÍA, THE CUBAN LEADER WITH of grass so high that our horses were hidden, and without a sign of a habitation, and

WHOM LIEUTENANT ROWAN WENT TO CONFER.

we met no evidence of human life till we struck the royal road to Manzanillo near

From a sketch by General Enrique Collazo.

Peralejo, the scene of Maceo's attack on Campo's command. Here we saw many squads of men, women, and children hurrying along. Bayamo had fallen. These people were going again to the city from which they had been expelled for over three years. They formed ragged but merry groups. This part of Cuba is a tropical garden gone to waste. Even what was once the great highway from Manzanillo to Bayamo is now in places overgrown with

It

brush. A straggling telegraph pole here and and botanical resources of the country, I there also tells its tale of destruction. On found a never-ending source of instruction. reaching the banks of the Bayamo, we saw We camped that night near the Cauto, where some of the little forts of the Spaniards. I observed, as I had all along, the disinterThey looked much like railroad water-tanks, ested patriotism of the Cuban soldier. and they would be quite useless to withstand was nearly midnight when our supper was artillery fire. The Cuban flag was flying over finished. The men behind the guns had yet the village of Bayamo. At the door of the to look out for themselves. If they carried headquarters I was met by General Calixto rations no one could say how or where, but García. I gave him my papers, made a before they retired they had obtained someshort statement of my business, and was thing to eat. They had looked out for the given a glass of rum and invited to break- officers and for the horses, and, lastly, for fast, for it was now twelve o'clock. Break- themselves. There was no complaint. fast over, we went to work, and by nightfall the return despatches were ready. General García asked me if I could leave that night, and I answered in the affirmative. In an hour our mounts were standing before the door. I bade farewell, and after a touching parting with Gervacio, whose many virtues I had tried to lay before General García, we rode on to the northward.

It was evident that General García was a "to-day" man. No "mañana" man was he. He is a large, well-built man of about sixty years of age a gentleman in appearance and manner, a good soldier, and so far as his resources go, a great general. His department extends from the eastern trocha to Point Maisí. He has kept the Spaniards confined to a few of the larger towns, and when the smaller ones were occupied by them, he promptly laid siege and generally drove them out. In this way Victoria de la Tunas and Guisa and Guaymar have passed one after another into his hands.

Our new party was headed by General Enrique Collazo, and with him was his chief of staff, Colonel Carlos Hernandez. The General had been present during the afternoon's consultation, and General García had spoken of him in high terms as an honest, straightforward, and intelligent officer, a graduate of the Artillery School at Segovia in Spain. He has been prominent in politics in Cuba for three years. The more I knew of General Collazo the more I liked and admired the man.

The next day at Cauto El Paso we forded the broad Cauto-a stream which in the rainy season becomes a raging, impassable torrent. Near nightfall we passed the remains of an old Spanish earthwork, turned into the brush, and camped under a shed called Las Arenas. The next day we reached Victoria de Las Tunas, the scene of García's great victory, where we examined the ruined works. I believe it to be the most completely destroyed town of modern times. Every building has been razed to the ground, and will never again furnish a foothold for Spanish troops. That night the sand flies deprived me of sleep, and, having no bedding, I suffered from the cold, as, indeed, I did every night I was on the island. Warm days and cold nights were the rule.

The next day was spent in preparing for the voyage to Nassau. Sails had to be improvised from hammock canopies and food collected from the neighboring forests. May the fifth found us on our way to the coast

our last day's ride. About sunset we cut our way through the grape thicket that walls in the sea and drew a little cockle-shell of a boat from under a mangrove bush. It had a capacity of only 104 cubic feet, much too small for our party. Dr. Bieta was accordingly sent back, leaving six of us, with a seat for each and a place between our legs for the supplies. There was small comfort in thinking of a long and dangerous voyage at sea in such a craft.

Colonel Hernandez was educated in the At eleven o'clock that night we pulled out United States, and his service to Cuba has cautiously under cover of darkness, leaving been unflinchingly loyal. His health has been behind us the harbor of Manatí and entering ruined, and he bears the marks of Mauser a choppy sea. It was desperately hard rowbullets that passed through his right lung. ing, and the big waves were continually washHe it was who planted the mines along the ing over the gunwales, wetting our stores Cauto, and lay in ambush on the high banks and keeping us busy bailing. All night long back from the river for the Spanish lanchas we worked steadily without a wink of sleep. bearing troops and supplies for the Bayamo At dawn the next morning the man at the district. His knowledge of the topography helm called out, "un vapor "-a steamer. and his acquaintance with the geological This was followed by "dos vapores, tres

RICHMOND, VIRGINIA, AT THE CLOSE OF THE WAR, AFTER IT HAD BEEN BURNED BY THE CONFEDERATES. FROM THE POTOMAC RIVER. THE BUILDING ON THE HIGH GROUND IN THE CENTER IS THE CAPITOL.

VIEW

BY CHARLES A. DANA,

Assistant Secretary of War from 1863 to 1865.

WITH PORTRAITS AND OTHER PICTURES FROM THE WAR DEPARTMENT COLLECTION OF CIVIL WAR PHOTOGRAPHS,

IX.

THE END OF THE WAR.

ALL through the fall of 1864 I was very much occupied in arranging for soldiers to go home to vote and for the taking of ballots in the army. There was a constant succession of telegrams requesting that leave of absence be extended to various officers, in order that their districts at home might have the benefit of their influence and votes; that furloughs be granted to men; and that men on detached service and convalescents in hospitals be sent home.

All the power and influence of the War Department, then something enormous from the vast expenditure and extensive relations of the war, was employed to secure the reëlection of Mr. Lincoln. The political struggle was most intense, and the interest taken in it, both in the White House and in the War Department, was almost painful. After the arduous toil of the canvass, there was necessarily a great suspense of feeling until the result of the voting should be ascertained. On November 8th, election day, I

went over to the War Department about GENERAL LEWIS B. PARSONS, MANAGER OF RAILROAD

half-past eight in the evening, and found

the President and Mr. Stanton together in the Secretary's office. Major Eckert, who then had charge of the telegraph department of the War Office, was coming in constantly with telegrams containing election returns. Mr. Stanton would read them, and the President would look at them and comment upon them. Presently there came a lull in the returns, and Mr. Lincoln called me to a place by his side.

"Dana," said he, "have you ever read any of the writings of Petroleum V. Nasby?" No, sir," I said, "I have only looked at some of them, and

66

they seemed to be quite funny."

and desponding temperament-this was Mr. Lincoln's prevailing characteristic that the safety and sanity of his intelligence were maintained and preserved.

The election was hardly over before the people of the North began to prepare Thanksgiving boxes for the army. George Bliss, Jr., of New York, telegraphed me, on November 16th, that they had 20,000 turkeys ready in that city to send, and the next day, fearing, I suppose, that that wasn't enough, he wired: "It would be a very great convenience in our turkey business if I could

know definitely the approximate number of men in the armies of the Potomac, James, and Shenandoah respectively." From Philadelphia I received a message asking for transportation to Sheridan's army for "boxes containing 4,000 turkeys, and heaven knows what else, as

a Thanksgiving dinner for the brave fellows." And so it was, from all over the country.

MOVING AN ARMY
CORPS 1,400 MILES.

"Well," said he, "let me read you a specimen," and, pulling out a thin, yellow-covered pamphlet from his breast pocket, he began to read aloud. Mr. Stanton viewed these proceedings with great impatience, as I could see; but Mr. Lincoln paid no attention to that. He would read a page or a story, pause to consider a new election telegram, and then open the book again and go ahead with a new passage. FinalA couple of months ly, Mr. Chase came later, in January, in, and presently Mr. 1865, a piece of work Whitelaw Reid, and not so different from then the reading was the "turkey busiinterrupted. Mr. Stanton went to the door, ness," but on a rather larger scale, fell and beckoned me into the next room. I to me. This was the transfer of the Twentyshall never forget the fire of his indigna- third Army Corps, commanded by Majortion at what seemed to him to be mere non- General John M. Schofield, from its position sense. The idea that, when the safety of on the Tennessee River to Chesapeake Bay. the Republic was thus at issue, when the Grant had ordered the corps transferred control of an empire was to be determined as quickly as possible, and Mr. Stanton by a few figures brought in by the tele- turned over the direction of it to me. On graph, the leader, the man most deeply January 10th, I telegraphed Grant at City concerned, not merely for himself, but for Point the plan to be followed. This, briefly, his country, could turn aside to read such was to send Colonel Lewis B. Parsons, chief balderdash and to laugh at such frivolous of railroad and river transportation, to the jests was to his mind repugnant, even West to take charge of the corps. I prodamnable. He could not understand, ap- posed to move the whole body by boats parently, that it was by the relief which to Parkersburg, if navigation allowed, and these jests afforded to the strain of mind thence by the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad under which Lincoln had so long been living to Annapolis, for I remembered well with and to the natural gloom of a melancholy what promptness and success Hooker's

GENERAL GODFREY WEITZEL, WHO COMMANDED THE
UNION FORCES IN RICHMOND AFTER ITS EVACUA-
TION BY THE CONFEDERATES.