June 20, 1898--Troop Ship near Santiago. All day we have steamed close to the Cuban coast; high barren-looking mountains rise abruptly from the shore, and at this distance look much like those of Montana. We are well within the tropics and at night, the Southern Cross is low above the horizon. It seems too strange to see it in the same sky with the friendly Dipper. And then later: June 25, 1898--Las Guasimas-- Yesterday we struck the Spaniards and had a brisk fight for two and a half hours before we drove them out of their position. We lost twelve men, killed or mortally wounded, and sixty, severely or slightly wounded. Brodie was wounded,--poor Capron and Ham Fish were killed; one man was killed as he stood beside a tree with me, another bullet went through a tree behind which I stood and filled my eyes with bark. The last charge I led on the left using a rifle I took from a wounded man. Every man behaved well; there was no flinching. The fire was very hot at one or two points where the men around me went down like nine-pins. We have been ashore three days and were moved at once to the front without our baggage. I have been sleeping on the ground in a mackintosh, and so drenched with sweat that I have not been dry a minute day and night. The marches have been very severe. One of my horses was drowned swimming through the surf. It was a fierce fight; the Spaniards shot well, but they did not stand when we rushed. We received the details of the fight of Las Guasimas on the 4th of July, I remember, and all night long I sat on my piazza on Orange Mountain, thinking, with a strange horror, of the danger in which my brother had been and still was. On June 27, 1898, another letter, this time dated Santiago: “We have a lovely camp here by a beautiful stream which runs through jungle-land banks. The morning after the fight, we buried our dead in a great big trench, reading the solemn burial service over them, and all the regiment joined in singing ‘Rock of Ages.’ The woods are full of land crabs, some of which are almost as big as rabbits; when things grew quiet, they slowly gathered in gruesome rings around the fallen.” Bob Ferguson also adds interesting evidence to the courage of the First Volunteer Cavalry under fire. Las Guasimas--June 25, 1898.