"Unless you have a good, strong 'pull' [_mucha influencia_], don't complain that your rations are bad. If you do, you may have to come and live in Morro Castle, where they will be much worse." Another, addressing a girl named "Petenera," who seems to have gotten him into trouble, exclaims: Petenera, my life! Petenera, my heart! It is all your fault. That I lie here in Morro Suffering pain and writing my name On the plastered wall. JOSE. Probably "Jose" went to see "Petenera" without first obtaining leave of absence, and was shut up in one of the gloomy guard-rooms of Morro Castle as a punishment. Another wall-writer, in a philosophic, reflective, and rather melancholy mood, says: Tu me sobreviviras. Que vale el ser del hombres Cuando un escrito vale mas! You [my writing] will survive me. What avails it to be a man, when a scrap of writing is worth more! It is a fact which, perhaps, may not be wholly unworthy of notice that, among the sketches I saw and the mural inscriptions I copied in all parts of Morro Castle, there was not an indecent picture nor an improper word, sentence, or line. Spanish soldiers may be cruel, but they do not appear to be vicious or corrupt in the way that soldiers often are. In wandering through the corridors and gloomy chambers of the castle, copying inscriptions on walls and cannon, and exploring out-of-the-way nooks and corners, I spent a large part of the day. I found that the masonry of the fortress had suffered even less from the guns of Admiral Sampson's fleet than I had supposed. The eastern and southeastern faces of the upper cube had been damaged a little; the parapet, or battlement, of the gun-floor had been shattered in one place, and the debris from it had fallen over and partly blocked up the steps leading to that floor from the second story; two or three of the corner turrets had been injured by small shells; and there was a deep scar, or circular pit, in the face of the eastern wall, over the moat, where the masonry had been struck squarely by a heavy projectile; but, with the exception of these comparatively trifling injuries, the old fortress remained intact. Newspaper men described it as "in ruins" or "almost destroyed" half a dozen times in the course of the summer; and the correspondent of a prominent metropolitan journal, who entered the harbor on his despatch-boat just behind the _State of Texas_ the day that Santiago surrendered, did not hesitate to say: "The old fort is a mass of ruins. The stone foundation has been weakened by the shells from the fleet, causing a portion of the castle to settle from ten to twenty feet. Only the walls on the inner side remain. The terraces have been obliterated and the guns dismounted and buried in the debris. There are great crevices in the supporting walls, and the fort is in a general state of collapse."