The Independence Day number is very brief. It announces that the prisoners are to be sent north on the _Harvard_ and _St. Louis_; that they number 1,750; that the dead among the Spanish ships were over six hundred; that General Pando had reached Santiago with five thousand men; that the _Brooklyn_ and _Marblehead_ had gone to Guantanamo to overhaul and coal, and then tells of the _Reina Mercedes’s_ skirmish on that day, saying: [Illustration: U. S. S. INDIANA.] “Just before midnight of this date the _Massachusetts_, which was in front of the port with her search-light up to the entrance, reported an enemy’s vessel coming out, and she and the _Texas_ fired a number of shots in the direction of the harbour mouth. The batteries also opened, and a number of shell fell at various points, the attention paid by the batteries to the ships being general. The _Indiana_ was struck on the starboard side of the quarter-deck by a mortar shell, which exploded on reaching the second deck near the ward-room ladder; it caused a fire which was quickly extinguished. This was the first accident of the kind to the fleet. The vessel inside turned out to be the _Reina Mercedes_, which was sunk on the east edge of the channel just by the Estrella battery. She heads north, and is canted over to port with her port rail under water. She does not appear to obstruct the channel.” The issue of July 5th is of greater interest: “Mention of the presence of the torpedo-boat _Ericsson_, on the third instant, was unfortunately omitted. She was in company with a flag-ship, and turned at once upon sighting the enemy. As she was drawing away from the _New York_ she signalled, asking permission to continue in chase, but she was directed to pick up two men in the water, which she did, and on reaching the _Vizcaya_ she was directed by the _Iowa_, the flag-ship having gone ahead, to assist in the rescue of the _Vizcaya’s_ crew. She took off eleven officers and ninety men. The guns of the _Vizcaya_ during the operation were going off from the heat, and explosions were frequent, so that the work was trying and perilous for the boats of the two vessels (_Iowa_ and _Ericsson_) engaged. “The former report from the army, which was official, regarding General Pando’s entry into Santiago, was an error. General Shafter thought that he had been enabled to form a junction, but some few of his men only had been able to do so; the general himself and his remaining force, it is thought, will not be able. “The day was an uneventful one from a naval standpoint. The flag-ship went to the wrecks of the _Infanta Maria Teresa_ and the _Almirante_. The former lies in an easy position on sand, and with almost her normal draught of water. She is, of course, completely burned out inside above her protective deck, but the shell of her hull seems very good, and her machinery is probably not seriously injured.