An officer from the _New York_ had been at work all day locating and removing the submarine mines in the narrow part of the channel just north of Morro Castle; but there were still four that had not been exploded. As they were electrical mines, however, and as the cables connecting them with the shore had been cut, they were no longer dangerous, and there was nothing to prevent the entrance of the _State of Texas_ except the narrowness of the unobstructed part of the channel. The collier _Merrimac_, sunk by Lieutenant Hobson and his men, was not in a position to interfere seriously with navigation. Cervera's fleet ran out without any serious trouble on the western side of her, and there was no reason why Admiral Sampson, if he decided to force an entrance, should not run in, following the same course. In order to prevent this, the Spaniards, on the night of July 4, attempted to sink the old war-ship _Reina Mercedes_ in such a position that she would close the channel at a point where it is very narrow, between the _Merrimac_ and the entrance to the harbor. The ships of the blockading fleet, however, saw her coming out about midnight, turned their big guns upon her, and sank her with six-and eight-inch projectiles before she could get into position. She drifted around parallel with the shore, and lay half submerged on the eastern side of the channel, about one hundred and fifty yards from the entrance and three hundred or three hundred and fifty yards from the _Merrimac_. At four o'clock Admiral Sampson sent Lieutenant Capehart on board the _State of Texas_ to give Captain Young all necessary information with regard to the channel and the mines, and a few moments later, under the guidance of a Cuban pilot, we steamed slowly in under the gray, frowning battlements of Morro Castle. As we approached it I had an opportunity to see, for the first time, the nature and extent of the damage done to it by the guns of Admiral Sampson's fleet, and I was glad to find that, although it had been somewhat battered on its southern or sea face, its architectural picturesqueness had not been destroyed or even seriously impaired. To an observer looking at it from the south, it has, in general outline, the appearance of three huge cubes or rectangular masses of gray masonry, put together in such a way that the largest cube occupies the crest of the bold, almost precipitous bluff which forms the eastern side of the entrance to the harbor, while the other two descend from it in colossal steps of diminishing size toward an escarpment in the hillside seventy-five or a hundred feet below, where appear five or six square, grated doors, leading, apparently, to a row of subterranean ammunition-vaults. Underneath the escarpment is a zigzag flight of steps, screened at exposed points by what seem to be comparatively recent walls, or curtains of masonry, much lighter in color than the walls of the castle itself. Still lower down, at the base