of the bluff, are two or three huge, dark caves into which the swell of the Caribbean Sea rolls with a dull, reverberating roar. The height of the castle above the water appears to be one hundred and fifty or two hundred feet. There are very few embrasures, or port-holes, in the gray, lichen-stained walls of the old fortification, and, so far as I could see, it had no armament whatever except two or three guns mounted en barbette on the parapet of the uppermost cube, or bastion. As a defensive work the Morro Castle of Santiago has no importance or significance whatever, and its complete destruction would not have made it any easier for Admiral Sampson to force an entrance to the harbor. It is the oldest Morro, however, in Cuba; and as a relic of the past, and an interesting and attractive feature in a landscape already picturesque, it has the highest possible value, and I am more than glad that it was not destroyed. There was no reason, really, for bombarding it at all, because it was perfectly harmless. The defenses of Santiago that were really dangerous and effective were the submarine mines in the channel and the earthwork batteries east and west of the entrance to the harbor. Morro was huge, formidable-looking, and impressive to the eye and the imagination, but the horizontal reddish streaks of freshly turned earth along the crests of the hills east and west of it had ten times its offensive power. I saw the last Spanish soldier leave the castle at noon on Sunday, and when we passed it, soon after four o'clock, its flag was gone, its walls were deserted, and buzzards were soaring in circles about its little corner turrets. About one hundred and fifty yards inside the entrance to the harbor we passed the wreck of the _Reina Mercedes_, lying close to the shore, on the right-hand side of the channel, with her port rail under water and her masts sloping at an angle of forty-five degrees to the westward. Two brass-bound sea-chests and a pile of signal-flags were lying on her deck aft, and she had not been touched, apparently, since she was sunk by the guns of our battle-ships on the night of July 4.