“Farther along the desperate character of the Spanish resistance, as planned, amazed our officers. Although primitive, it was well done. Each approach to the city was thrice barricaded and wired, and the barricades were high enough and sufficiently strong to withstand shrapnel. The slaughter among our troops would have been frightful had it ever become necessary to storm the city. “Around the hospitals and public buildings and along the west side of the line there were additional works and emplacements for guns, though no guns were mounted in them. “The streets of Santiago are crooked, with narrow lines of one-storied houses, most of which are very dilapidated, but every veranda of every house was thronged by its curious inhabitants,—disarmed soldiers. These were mostly of the lower classes. “Few expressions of any kind were heard along the route. Here and there was a shout for free Cuba from some Cuban sympathiser, but as a rule there were only low mutterings. The better class of Spaniards remained indoors, or satisfied their curiosity from behind drawn blinds. “Several Spanish ladies in tumble-down carriages averted their faces as we passed. The squalor in the streets was frightful. The bones of dead horses and other animals were bleaching in the streets, and buzzards, as tame as sparrows, hopped aside to let us pass. “The windows of the hospitals, in which there are over fifteen hundred sick men, were crowded with invalids, who dragged themselves there to witness our incoming. “The palace was reached soon after ten o’clock. There General Toral introduced General Shafter and the other American generals to the alcalde, Señor Feror, and to the chief of police, Señor Guiltillerrez, as well as to the other municipal authorities. “Luncheon was then served at the palace. The meal consisted mainly of rum, wine, coffee, rice, and toasted cake. This scant fare occasioned many apologies on the part of the Spaniards, but it spoke eloquently of their heroic resistance. The fruit supply of the city was absolutely exhausted, and the Spaniards had nothing to live on except rice, on which the soldiers in the trenches of Santiago have subsisted for the last twelve days.” Ten thousand people witnessed the ceremony of hoisting the stars and stripes over the governor’s palace in Santiago. A finer stage setting for a dramatic episode it would be difficult to imagine. The palace, a picturesque old dwelling in the Moorish style of architecture, faces the Plaza de la Reina, the principal public square. Opposite rises the imposing Catholic cathedral. On one side is a quaint, brilliantly painted building with broad verandas, the club of San Carlos; on the other a building of much the same description, the Café de la Venus.