On the afternoon of the 23d, Cuban scouts reported the position of the enemy to General Wheeler, who was then in command of our advance, and, after a council of war, it was decided to attack simultaneously by both roads. Early on the morning of Friday, June 24, therefore, General Young, with the First and Tenth dismounted cavalry, marched out of Siboney on the main road to Santiago, and proceeded up the valley of the little stream which empties into the sea through the Siboney notch; while Colonel Wood, at the head of the Rough Riders, climbed the end of the rampart, on the western side of the notch, and advanced toward Guasimas by the mesa trail, which is considerably higher than the main road and lies half a mile to a mile farther west. The two columns encountered the enemy at about the same time. The Rough Riders, under Colonel Wood, began the attack on the mesa trail, and a few moments later General Young's command, on the Siboney-Santiago road, opened fire with three Hotchkiss mountain guns and began the ascent of the hill from the valley. The whole country was so overgrown with trees, shrubs, and tropical vines that it was almost impossible to see an object fifty yards away, and as the Spaniards used smokeless powder, it was extremely difficult to ascertain their position, or even to know exactly where our own troops were. Colonel Wood deployed his regiment to the right and left of the trail, and endeavored, as he advanced, to extend his line so as to form a junction with General Young's command on the right, and at the same time outflank the enemy on the left; but the tropical undergrowth was so dense and luxuriant that neither of the attacking columns could see the other, and all that they could do, in the way of mutual support and cooeperation, was to push ahead toward the junction of the two roads, firing, almost at random, into the bushes and vine-tangled thickets from which the Mauser bullets seemed to come. Colonel Roosevelt told me that once he caught a glimpse of the Spaniards, drawn up in line of battle; but during the greater part of the engagement they were concealed in the chaparral, and could be seen only when they broke from cover and fled, to escape the searching fire of our steadily advancing line. While Colonel Wood, on the left, was driving the enemy out of the jungles intersected by the mesa trail, General Young, with a part of the Tenth Cavalry (colored) supported by four troops of the First, was engaged in storming the hill up which ran the valley road; and at the end of an hour and a half, after a stubborn defense, the Spaniards were forced to abandon their chosen position and retreat in the direction of Santiago, leaving the junction of the two roads in our possession. The battle of Guasimas--the first fight of the Santiago campaign--had been won.