"We were in a valley when we started, but made at once for a trail running near the top of a ridge called La Quasina, several hundred feet high, which, with several others parallel to it, extended in the direction of Santiago. By a similar trail near the top of the ridge to our right several companies of Negro troopers of the Ninth and Tenth United States Cavalry marched in scout formation, as we did. We had an idea about where the Spaniards were and depended upon Cuban scouts to warn us but they did not do it. At about 8:30 o'clock in the morning we met a volley from the enemy, who were ambushed, not only on our ridge, but on the one to the right, beyond the Negro troops, and the Negro soldiers were under a cross fire. That is how Capt. Capron and Hamilton Fish were killed." It says: "Handsome young Sergt. Stewart, the Rough Rider protege of Henry W. Maxwell, when he was telling of the fight in the ambush, gave it as his opinion that the Rough Riders would have been whipped out if the Tenth Cavalry (colored) had not come up just in time to drive the Spaniards back. 'I'm a Southerner, from New Mexico, and I never thought much of the 'nigger' before. Now I know what they are made of. I respect them. They certainly can fight like the devil and they don't care for bullets any more than they do for the leaves that shower down on them. I've changed my opinion of the colored folks, for all of the men that I saw fighting, there were none to beat the Tenth Cavalry and the colored infantry at Santiago, and I don't mind saying so.'" The description which follows is interesting: "It was simply grand to see how those young fellows, and old fellows, too, men who were rich and had been the petted of society in the city, walk up and down the lines while their clothes were powdered by the dust from exploding shells and torn by broken fragments cool as could be and yelling to the men to lay low and take good aim, or directing some squad to take care of a poor devil who was wounded. Why, at times there when the bullets were so thick they mowed the grass down like grass cutters in places, the officers stood looking at the enemy through glasses as if they were enjoying the scene, and now and then you'd see a Captain or a Lieutenant pick up a gun from a wounded or dead man and blaze away himself at some good shot that he had caught sight of from his advantage point. Those sights kind of bring men together and make them think more of each other. And when a white man strayed from his regiment and falls wounded it rather affects him to have a Negro, shot himself a couple of times, take his carbine and make a splint of it to keep a torn limb together for the white soldier, and then, after lifting him to one side, pick up the wounded man's rifle and go back to the fight with as much vigor as ever. Yes, sir, we boys have learned something down there, even if some of us were pretty badly torn for it."