Note.--"While we talked, and the soldiers filled their canteens and drank deep and long, like camels who, after days of travel through the land of 'thirst and emptiness,' have reached the green oasis and the desert spring, a black corporal of the 24th Infantry walked wearily up to the 'water hole.' He was muddy and bedraggled. He carried no cup or canteen, and stretched himself out over the stepping-stones in the stream, sipping up the water and the mud together out of the shallow pool. A white cavalryman ran toward him shouting, 'Hold on, bunkie; here's my cup!' The negro looked dazed a moment, and not a few of the spectators showed amazement, for such a thing had rarely if ever happened in the army before. 'Thank you,' said the black corporal. 'Well, we are all fighting under the same flag now.' And so he drank out of the white man's cup. I was glad to see that I was not the only man who had come to recognize the justice of certain Constitutional amendments, in the light of the gallant behaviour of the colored troops throughout the battle, and, indeed, the campaign. The fortune of war had, of course, something to do with it in presenting to the colored troops the opportunities for distinguished service, of which they invariably availed themselves to the fullest extent; but the confidence of the general officers in their superb gallantry, which the event proved to be not misplaced, added still more, and it is a fact that the services of no four white regiments can be compared with those rendered by the four colored regiments--the 9th and 10th Cavalry, and the 24th and 25th Infantry. They were to the front at La Guasima, at Caney, and at San Juan, and what was the severest test of all, that came later, in the yellow-fever hospitals."--Bonsal. FOOTNOTES: [19] Official Report of General Sumner. CHAPTER VIII. SAN JUAN (Continued). Kent's Division: The Twenty-fourth Infantry; Forming Under Fire--A Gallant Charge. Turning now to the centre and left of the American line we follow the advance of that division of infantry commanded by General Kent, and which met the brunt of Spanish resistance at San Juan. This division, known as the First Division, Fifth Army Corps, consisted of three brigades, composed as follows: First Brigade, Brigadier-General Hawkins commanding, made up of the Sixth Infantry, the Sixteenth Infantry, and the Seventy-first New York Volunteers. The Second Brigade, Colonel Pearson commanding, made up of the Second Infantry, the Tenth Infantry and the Twenty-first Infantry.