Our march to Las Pozas was in the following order. The Hungarians formed the advanced guard; then came General Lopez, General Pragay, and their staff; next the Cuban company; then the American companies, forming Downman's regiment; and finally, after a short interval, the Germans, under Capt. Schlict brought up the rear.

We had marched but a short distance when we came upon four good horses, ready equipped for mounting. It was evident that they had been left by some friendly hands. The General and his principle staff officers were thus at once mounted. The men suffered excessively from the heat, and from the musquitoes, which for two of three miles on the coast, swarmed as none of us had ever witnessed before. Reader, do not the\ink I exaggerate when I assure you that they would darken any part of the body left exposed to their access. Handkerchief over the head and face, and gloves on the hands, afforded but imperfect protection from them. I have brushed them off with one hand from the other, so that fifty or sixty would fall to the ground at a stroke. They drew the first blood of the campaign, and plenty of it. They certainly were Catalan not Creole musquitoes.

An immense number of land crabs, and about the road, or cangrejos, was the second thing that struck our attention. They are about the size of lobsters, but are not eatable, being liable to be poisonous.

At about midway to Las Pozas we halted for rest, at a country store; the same place at which Crittenden halted too long the next day, both for himself and for us! We had here an early proof of the absence of discipline, or the spirit of discipline, among our men. The General's warnings were fruitless to restrain them from eating the mangoes they found, which are very unwholesome if not ripe. I may also add that our efforts were in vain to preserve any compact order in the march. The men would straggle along in a disorderly fashion, and the advance guard had frequently to halt to enable the rear to close up. It seems incredible and inconceivable, in such a position as ours, but already on this, our first day's experience, two or three of the men, (as undisciplined soldiers sometimes will do) actually threw away their muskets to lighten their march under the oppressive heat. Two also, one an Italian, the other an American, (and this was Dr. Fourniquet), fell out of line, and stopped behind, thinking to rejoin us in the cool of the evening, or to come along with the rear. We never saw them again.

We passed very few houses, and these were deserted. There was evidently a sparse population in this quarter. At one time we saw a small body of about five-and-twenty horsemen armed; and the General sent forward one of the soldiers who had joined him at Cardenas, an intelligent man named Ribas, to speak to them at a distance, and tell them his name and object of the expedition. Their commander shouted out in answer that they were good Spaniards, and had no one to recognize but her Majesty Isabel Segunda, and, without any attempt to fire upon us, galloped off at full speed. We of course had no means of pursuing. They belonged to a sort of mounted patrol police called la ronda.

At the store at which we halted, occurred the only instance of an attempt at robbery that at any time occurred. In spite of strict orders that had been given for the respect to be shown to all private property and persons, one man was observed by General Pragay breaking into the house apparently for that purpose. Pragay wanted to set the example of killing him on the spot. A violent uproar arose. Pragay had, I believe, struck the man, or in some other way roughly handled him. The man presented his musket, and called on some of his comrades to assist him, against a "d-----d foreigner" who had struck an American. Many crowded to the spot, though none knew at first what was the matter. Pragay had to draw his sword, and was there inside the house, in the midst of no small confusion and tumult; himself in a violent passion, and able to speak very little English. It promptly reached the General's ears, whose arrival brought a restoration of order. Some of the officers interceded in the offender's behalf, and on his promise never to repeat the act, Pragay's indignation was appeased, and in our situation at the time it was thought best that the man be pardoned with a reprimand.

Las Pozas, which we reached at about two o'clock, is a poor little village of perhaps fifty houses, stretching principally on a single street, which is a continuation of the road from Morillo by which we had come,--that is to say, of the high road from Bahia Honda, into which we had struck, at about a league from Las Pozas, from the smaller road leading from Morillo. The mouth of this street or entrance into the village, is considerable elevated, being on the crown of a little eminence or ridge. On each side of the entrance is a little hill, forming, indeed, parts of the ridge referred. This is the highest part of the village, the street then sloping down irregularly from that point. In the battle that was fought the next day, this ridge formed our line, our men occupying the slight eminences on the two sides of the road leading up into the village, up which the enemy attempted to make his way. Before us lay a hollow or valley through which the road swept, not in a straight line, but curving from the right side to the left at about the bottom of the valley, so that it skirted the base of the eminence on our right. On the right of this road as it ascended, was a wood which covered our left. On the other side was a large corn-field, beginning on the slope of the hill on which rested our right. On the right of this road as it ascended, was a wood which covered our left. On the other side was a large cornfield, beginning on the slope of the hill on which rested our right, and fenced in from the road; though the fence, especially towards the bottom of the valley, was not close to the road, but afforded us a considerable space between it and the road. From the nature of the ground therefore, the enemy could only attack the position we occupied in the battle, by charging up the road to penetrate into the village, and through the corn-field on our right, up the hill, or rather successions of several knolls or eminences which swelled on the left of their road. On the other side (the enemies right) our left was effectually screened by the wood already mentioned. A little to the right of the road, at about the top of the ascent, and constituting the entrance of the village, stood a house detached from all others, and about fifteen or twenty yards from where the more thickly planted houses of the street commenced.

The village was almost entirely deserted on our entrance. Besides whatever fear any might have felt, in inhabitants had been ordered off by the local authorities. Only a few men stayed at home, including the owners of the two stores of the place (always Catalans or old Spaniards) and a few negroes. The General at once issued a proclamation, assuring the people that we had come only as their friends and auxiliaries against their oppressors. A requisition was also at once made for provisions and carts, and no time was lost in getting them. Three of the latter were procured, and in about an hour and a half after our arrival dispatched to Crittenden with an escort of eight men, and orders for him to push forward as fast as possible, and by all means rejoin before daybreak. He would thus have the benefit of the coolness of the night for his march.

Less than a quarter of an hour after the departure of the carts, a peasant came in from Bahia Honda, who informed the General that the news of our landing had been sent to Havana the evening before by the frigate "Esperanza," which had pursued us, and that a division of troops had already arrived at Bahia Honda, which was about to move forward at once to operate against us. The captain of the frigate had sent an express to the commanding officer at Mariel, and from Mariel the distance is short to Guanajay, which is the terminus of a railroad communication with Havana. General Lopez had no intention of bringing his men into combat until he should have had a little more time to discipline them. Daring to rashness as he is generally regarded, he really was cautious as well as bold. He doubted the result of an attack by superior forces of disciplined soldiers, upon his little force in its present condition; and his plan was to fall back into the mountains, take a strong position where he could maintain himself, sending out his proclamations, &c., till his friends could rally to him, and where he expected soon to get gradually strengthened by desertions from his old soldiers, the Spanish troops themselves. He had pledges even from Spanish colonels. For all this a little time was needed, and an established footing. Meanwhile, the Pampero would soon, he hoped, convey to the Central Department the expedition for which both the men and materials were waiting her coming near the St. John's River, under his trusted friends, Sanchez Yznaga, Gonzales, Macias, and others, according to the orders he had sent them back by the Pampero. The whole Island would then be soon up with pronunciamientos in different quarters, while he would then, so soon as he should have established the insurrection with a good hold, seize upon the first opportunity that should arise for striking a vigorous blow, and follow it up with that distracting rapidity of movements which was his particular delight in war.

This was his plan for the campaign of the revolution, which, he believed on this plan would be a short and triumphant one. He had no intention of fighting at Las Pozas. Indeed, he was impatient to be off from there, and to strike in the mountains. This impatience was increased by the notice brought by the peasant from Bahia Honda, that the Spaniards were already acting so promptly. It is true that the accounts given him at Key West, of the manner in which Havana had been stripped of troops to send them against the insurgents at the eastward, made him believe that Concha would not have been able to dispatch at once any force sufficient to hazard an immediate attack with it, uncertain as the former would be of the force of the Expedition. He thought he would have a days start, before the troops would be upon him, and he knew that the Spanish soldiers in Cuba cannot stand much fatigue in marching. Expecting Crittenden to join in the course of the night, he meant to evacuate Las Pozas early in the morning. In the point of fact the news of our landing reached the Captain-General about an hour before Gen. Lopez himself left the side of the Pampero. With a dispatch highly creditable to Concha and his officers he had his first column, seven companies, under Enna, his second in command, on board a steam-boat, and under steam, within four or five hours, and they landed at Bahia Honda at about the same time that we reached Las Pozas. Informed of our small force, and probably of Crittenden's separation from the main body, and doubtless counting somewhat on our being as yet in poor condition for an engagement, Enna pushed on, expecting to crush us at a blow, before we could be strengthened from the country. Enna was a brave officer, cruel but energetic. I have since learned that he was sometimes called the Napoleon of the Spanish army in Cuba.

Immediately on receiving this intelligence from Bahia Honda, and about a quarter of an hour after the carts had started for Morillo, the General dispatched an order to Crittenden to leave the heavy baggage and push forward immediately to join him without fail that night. The few thousands of cartridges, his papers, &c., could thus have been brought forward on the persons of the men. The muskets, powder, and luggage he preferred to abandon, rather than prolong his separation from Crittenden and detention at Las Pozas, from which place he meant to set out the first thing in the morning. I wrote the order to Crittenden myself, and the General sent it by a man of the place whom he felt able to trust, as a surer mode of conveyance than any other; unwilling as he was to detach any more men from our little force, of about 280, at Las Pozas.

This order reached Crittenden about an hour before the carts. Of this there is no doubt. When a portion of his command rejoined us under Captain Kelly, the night after the battle, I was so informed by several of the officers. I particularly remember Rekendorf,--since dead, poor fellow,--and Radnitz, now, still more unfortunate, in Ceuta.⁽¹⁾ Alas, alas, that Crittenden, instead of obeying orders, undertook to judge them, to deliberate, to disregard them! He, no doubt, deemed it a judicious disobedience; possibly there may have been some little influence upon his mind of the old discontent in regard to the positions of Colonel Downman and himself, and the dissatisfaction respecting the closer relations and supposed influence of the foreign officers of the staff with the General, biassing his mind towards an independent exercise of his own judgement, in the sort of independent command in which he was thus for the time placed. However we may explain it,--brave, gallant and noble fellow as he was--dear to us as he was in life, and proudly and tenderly cherished in our memories as he now is, in the bloody glory of his grave,--it was a cardinal military error. And it was, I think, the critical turning point of the fate of the enterprise. He not only undertook to bring on the heavy baggage, but finding that it loaded the carts too heavily, he sent one of the negro drivers out for more oxen, and when he had thus procured a couple of yokes to each cart, instead of the single yokes with which they had been sent, he set out, moving slowly, at about eleven o'clock that night.

We were meanwhile most anxiously wanting for him to come up. All through the night the General expected him. Of his arrival, from hour to hour, not the least doubt was entertained. Picket guards had been properly posted at the different approaches to the village, for though there was no apprehension of an immediate attack, yet no military precaution was neglected. The men were in good spirits, behaved perfectly well, and had a good night's rest, harassed by no other enemy than the musquitoes, nor disturbed by any other alarm than an extraordinary croaking of frogs. Whether this was the usual serenade enjoyed by the people of Las Pozas, or by a particular demonstration to the Liberating Army, I cannot say.

When the day broke and still no Crittenden! the General was extremely disturbed. He supposed that his double orders had not reached him, and feared that the carts with their escort must have been in some way cut off. To lose Crittenden and his force now, nearly a third of the Expedition, would be a dreadful blow, both from the weakening of our actual number, and still more from the bad moral influence such a calamity would have on the country!

Preparations were soon directed to be made for breakfast, and some cattle were killed for the purpose. In the meantime the men were called to drill and exercise. While this was in progress, in the main street of the village, and at about eight o'clock, what was our surprise to receive a volley of musketry from the house which I have mentioned above as standing a little detached at the entrance of the village, on the little eminence or knoll on the left! "The enemy, the enemy!" was the general cry, as we saw that house occupied by a body of Spanish soldiers. It seems that our pickets on the road judged for themselves that they had been on guard about long enough, and, unknown and unsuspected by us, had come in to join their comrades in the morning exercising, and I suppose to get their breakfasts! The consequence was a complete surprise; the enemy had quietly come up under cover of the rising ground on the ridge of which the village commences, and there was their advance guard in the village, and already in possession of an important position, from which, if they should maintain it, their fire would command the whole of ours!

There was pretty prompt hurrying to our arms and into position, with a great alacrity and spirit on the part of our men, on this notice that it was about time. The General at once ordered the Cuban company to dislodge the enemy from the house at the point of the bayonet. Captain Oberto led his men up very handsomely to do it. And they did it. They drove the troops out of the house, and pell-mell down the road, up which the main column of the enemy was advancing to the attack. Their gallant Captain Oberto received a mortal wound, and expired during the course of the battle thus well begun by him.

This was, in my judgment, the handsomest piece of military service done in the expedition. The soldiers were posted in a house, superior in number than the company that attacked them. The best veteran could not have done it better. This was indeed the only charge made at any time on our side, our fighting, both during the rest of this and in our subsequent encounters with the enemy, having consistently entirely in firing; which was always done, indeed, with great coolness, courage, and effect, with all that bravery and spirit of American volunteers, which make them, after a short time of discipline and experience in masses, such capital soldiers, yet, until they have gone through that period of training, it is not easy to get them to charge on a serious body of troops, compact and bristling. They think for themselves individually, and are very apt to judge that they can do the enemy more harm with balls than bayonets. Orders to charge are then somewhat liable to be given in vain; at least it was so with us, and certainly there was never more a courageous set of men than those of our little band, with very, very few exceptions of nerves that flinched at the pinch. The Cuban company had, perhaps, naturally enough, a stronger sentiment of subordination to General Lopez; who gave the this first and brilliant piece of work to do, as their duty as well as right, on their native soil.

While this was in progress the other companies, under the active directions of the General and Pragay, were springing into the positions mentioned in my description of the topography of this part of Las Pozas. The eminence on the left of the road was occupied by the Cuban company, resting on the house from which they had so handsomely driven the enemy, and screened from a flank attack by the thick wood already mentioned; across the road a cart was overturned, as a slight obstruction; and beyond it, on the right, on the other side of the fence, were the rest of our men, in companies, and on the eminences forming the ridge of land already described. The main efforts of Enna were directed to pushing his troops in column up the road. Our position covered it from both sides. Before us, at the distance of about a couple of hundred yards, the ground rose again on the opposite side, and he was posted the enemies reserve of a couple of companies. His main force was in the intervening hollow, during part of the time drawn up in line of battle, interchanging musketry with us, and on two occasions formed into column for the attempt to push up in a charge which should cut our line and penetrate the village. They also made some efforts to attack our right through the corn field, but Enna's main blows aimed at us were these two charges in column up the road. We afterwards learned that, of the company forming the head of the column on the first attempt, four men alone escaped unhurt from the rain of our fire, and of that which headed the second, seventeen. There was one time when some of them were within half a dozen yards from us. The two companies of reserve which were stationed on the rising ground opposite to us, never came nearer into the fight at all. After the break of Enna's second main effort, and the dreadful carnage which they saw made of their comrades, whom their position overlooked, they not only united in the general route which followed, but were from their situation the foremost then in the flight.

The most cruel heat of the fire last about thirty-five minutes. Our musketry was the most terrible I have ever seen. The Spanish accounts of the battle represented us as posted behind breast works; there was nothing of the kind. We were no less exposed than the enemy, both sides being in full view of each other, without any cover or defences; but we had all the advantage of the rapid and cool individual aim of American volunteers. Spanish soldiers, on the other hand, fired badly; for the most part before getting the musket well to the shoulder; and most of their balls passed over our heads. The carnage made amongst them was dreadful. They certainly stood the fire well, considering its severity. Their retreat, however, after their last break, was utter rout and flight. It seemed more like the panic of a wild tribe of savages, encountering fire-arms for the first time, than the retreat of disciplined troops. As we did not pursue, a few formed irregularly at a distance, under cover of tress or irregularities of the ground, and it was about an hour and a half from the beginning of the action before all firing had ceased, and the last of them disappeared over the ridge of the opposite side of the little valley between us.

We were about 275 or 280 strong in the battle of Las Pozas; the Spaniards over 800. Our loss was from 30-35 in killed and wounded; not including eight or ten so slightly wounded as to be able still to march with us. Of the enemy we counted in and immediately near the road one hundred and eighty dead bodies. The umber of wounded I cannot say. It was very great, as we afterwards learned, and as must of course have been the case, to bear a proportion of those actually killed. They suffered severely in their officers. General Enna's horse was shot under him, and Colonel Nadal, his second in command, was killed. He was an excellent officer, and an old friend of General Lopez. I have since heard that, shortly before the coming of the Expedition, he had rebuked, in a decided manner, some persons who were speaking in his presence disparagingly of General Lopez.

We afterwards were told in Havana, that the Spanish soldiers carried away from Las Pozas the belief that the Americans had some extraordinary destructive kind of weapons and ammunition. Common muskets were the only ones employed. Our men had landed with about eighty rounds of cartridges a piece. We took from the Spanish dead on the field, a much needed reinforcement of ammunition, collecting over 12,000 cartridges. Being rather larger than the bore of our American muskets (all the Spanish muskets being English), we had to beat down the bullets somewhat in the cartridges to reduce their circumference. These, and the further supply we obtained in similar manner at our other battle of Frias, constituted all our ammunition in our little campaign. With it we fought and were victorious against vast odds, as long as we had any cartridges and available guns. After the deluge of rain on the mountains had destroyed all our powder, and spoiled all our remaining muskets, then of course there was an end of it.--But here is again another instance of my habit of anticipating my story.

I have done full justice, and no more than justice, to the firm and brave conduct, and the effective fire, of our men in this remarkable battle. I have now to tell a truth about them less flattering. Well as they stood and fired, charge they would not. These fellows were brave men beyond all possible question or suspicion. Their presence at Las Pozas at all, was some proof of it; their presence there after the battle, victors on the ground so well maintained by them, with three or four times the number of good disciplined troops either dead on the field or in full flight before them, was a still more decisive proof. And yet these same men, from want of discipline, and of the military habit of moving in masses, and of obeying orders without judging them, could not, as I have said, be carried forward in a charge against the enemy; could not be made to finish with the bayonet the work already done with the bullet. In this battle each man was fighting as it were on his own hook, and in his own way. The officers could do nothing more than get their men on the ground, and then cheer them with their presence and example, fighting and firing meanwhile themselves among them, pretty much in terms of equality. There was not much of giving or obeying of orders. Most of our officers were inexperienced in service as well as their men. On our right, General Pragay and Colonel Downman in vain attempted to carry down an attack upon the Spanish troops, at a time when their own first attack had been repulsed, and they were in considerable confusion. A good rush upon them then would have settled the business. Pragay called to the men (in the impetuous heat of the moment, and in his veteran indignation at the want of subordination) "if they were not all cowards to follow him." Unhappily, in the act of going ahead, he was struck down with a mortal wound! Colonel Downman, stung by his words, strode on (he was a colossal man, of advanced age), calling to the men to follow. A portion did so, but it was not in line nor in mass. The Spaniards were then falling back, but were rallied, and again advanced. Downman strode steadily on, never giving way a step, though the men who had at first irregularly followed him did so, falling back to their position and again opening the floodgates of their fatal fire. The consequence of course was that Downman was presently in the midst of the enemy, and this was down in the hollow, the ground where they were at first stationed. He thus may be said to have in effect charged down singly upon them. He was seen a moment exchanging sabre strokes with a Spanish officer. We afterwards picked up on the spot part of the officer's epaulet cloven off by one of the brave old man's heavy blow's. At a later period I learned that a Spanish soldier (the smallest man in his company, by the way, while Colonel Downman, as already remarked, was a giant) ran his bayonet into his side while he was thus engaged. Of course he soon fell, in the midst of the Spanish soldiers. We afterwards found him with three bullets in his broad and manly breast, and covered with other wounds. He was well avenged at least by the bullets from our line, for just at that part of the field the number of Spanish dead clustered on the ground was appalling to behold. His own sword, too, had probably not waved in vain, as he thus fell, in a soldier's death so glorious.

Pragay told me that Col. Downman had been captured, when he thus fell among the enemy, and had been then deliberately shot or executed, a little apart, in full view of his own men; against whom General Pragay was much irritated, for their want of obedience. But as Pragay was himself already at that time severely wounded, it is fairly to be presumed that he could not have seen it with his own eyes. From all of the information I have been able to gather, from Spanish sources as well as our own people, (I was myself on our left, and therefore did not witness it personally,) his death took place about as I have described. The Spanish officer reported his hand-to-hand meeting with a very large American officer, and that he himself received a wound in the neck, and immediately after it a stunning blow on the breast from the hilt of his sword; and the little soldier who bayoneted him in the side, while thus engaged, received afterwards some special reward for the act.

Peace to his ashes! He was a soldier and a man, every inch of that huge frame, animated as it was, by a spirit as high, and a heart as large!

On the left of the field, we experienced the same unwillingness to charge. Some of the Cuban Company obeyed an order to advance, when the enemy fell back in confusion the first time, and actually gathered up some of the Spanish cartridge boxes within the line which the enemy had occupied, but on the troops being rallied and brought back they also quickly regained their former position. At another moment, when there was an excellent opportunity, I proposed to the General, who then happened to be near me, that we should charge down. He agreed that it ought to be done, but said the men would never do it. I asked permission to call for forty volunteers for the purpose, and, receiving it, call for them as well as my imperfect English permitted, saying, that the enemy were now beaten, and we had only to attack to put them to flight. I was soon satisfied that the General was right;. The men would not do it. They wanted the confidence of numbers, and of military habit and discipline. They were merely that number of individuals, not that number of soldiers; and in the former capacity they had their American way of independent individual judgment, first, whether a course required of them was best or not, and secondly, whether they would take it or not. And after all, it must be said in excuse that their numbers were indeed very small, and they were in presence of a vast disparity of force, consisting of highly disciplined troops. As soldiers, our men wanted only a few weeks ripening in service. Had they been properly manageable as soldiers, so as to have admitted of their being carried forward in attack and pursuit of the beaten enemy at Las Pozas, I believe firmly, from all that I have since learned, (even notwithstanding Crittenden's fatal disaster,) that General Lopez would have soon entered Havana, very differently from the entrance of the old hero made little more than a fortnight later.

General Pragay's wound was not in itself certainly mortal. With proper treatment he might have recovered. It was a shot which passed through both thighs. He was carried to the rear, and one of the Hungarians brought me word of his fall. I hastened round to receive his last words, and met him as he was being carried to one of the first houses on the edge of the village. He at once told me to go back to my station; that he would do very well as he was. I of course obeyed, rejoiced to believe him less fatally wounded than I had supposed. The few Hungarians, called the Hungarian Company, who had been with him on the right, came round after his fall to the left where I was stationed.

Captain Oberto's death I have already mentioned, received in his fine attack on the troops in the house. Until my arrival in New York I had supposed that a wound in the neck with which we found him after the battle, was from a bayonet thrust. But I have since learned from young Captain Lopez, of his company, (a nephew of the General, and one of the finest young men of the Expedition.) that this was not the case. Oberto fell severely wounded, and knowing that in our situation a severe disabling wound was certain death, (since it made it impossible to accompany the march of our little force, and therefore must necessarily throw him into the hands of Spanish troops,) he at once relieved himself from the agony of suffering, and deprived the Spaniards of a victim, by striking a knife into his own neck. That was the wound which I mistook. But young Lopez witnessed, and has assured me of the real mode which closed the life of this brave and much esteemed gentleman, patriot, and soldier.

Poor Gotay, too, was another sad loss. He behaved with great gallantry. General Lopez said that his company decided an important crisis early in the battle, by the manner in which they obeyed the order to hasten to occupy a small eminence in which a Spanish company was at the same time rapidly moving. It would have been difficult to dislodge the enemy from it, and the position would have been a galling and commanding one. The two almost met upon it, but Gotay was first, and his fire drove the soldiers back. I believed that I have before mentioned that his company exhibited this singularity, that it was an American company commanded by a Cuban gentleman. He had not been a military man before, but he had organized his company in New Orleans some time before the Expedition, and they were in pretty good order. He was greatly beloved by them, and his death was a subject of universal regret in the Expedition. At the moment of his fall, Colonel Haynes was, by the General's directions, moving along the rear of the different companies, to prevent any stragglers from falling off from the engagement, back into the shelter of the village. Seeing Gotay sink to the ground so gently as almost to seem to be deliberately laying himself down, the bluff and brave old Colonel went up to him, and said, "Why, Gotay, what's the matter with you? Get up, man!" "I have got my death, Colonel," was the answer with great calmness. "But mind, that I want my second lieutenant to succeed me in command of the company, as he is the most fit for it. Viva Cuba!" Poor Gotay was always placid and amiable, but full of the truest spirit, and a tall, hansome, gentlemanly fellow. He did not expire on the field. How he did die is told below.

I do not specify the particular conduct of our different officers, who had not the same sorrowful title to individual mention, that of having fallen. All behaved with great gallantry. Of young Captain Ellis, (of Washington City.) I remember that after having his hand badly shattered by a ball, he remained still for some time on the spot, encouraging his men, and after having the wound washed, returned again into the fight, though enduring agonies of pain.

General Lopez's conduct throughout the battle was in character with his reputation for cool daring. His personal exposure was greater than that of the rest, as he was the only one on horseback, and the great fault of the Spanish firing was, that it was too high. He was in motion from one part to the other of our lines, with a cigar in his mouth, encouraging and stimulating the men, and everywhere received by them with hurrahs. "Bravo, bravo, Americano!" was his frequent expression to the men, often slapping them cordially on the back.⁽²⁾

"Fire," and "Go ahead, Boys!" were about the extent of his displays of English; but they were words very much to the point of the occasion.

Again after the battle was over, as had been the case during its continuance, we had to lament the want of manageableness in our men. If, as I have before said, they who had stood their ground so firmly, and fired so well, each man pretty much on his own hook, had only possessed more of that subordination which a little time would have given them, and which would have made them manageable under command, so that they could have been carried down in attack upon the beaten and retiring enemy, nothing would have been wanting to the completeness of the consequences of our victory, superadded to the brilliancy of its achievement. After the battle was over, the General ordered the veteran Col. Blumenthal to take two companies and follow up the enemy, along the Morillo road, and at the same time to effect a junction with Crittenden. The Spanish troops were now completely demoralized, he told him, and would make no serious resistance to any attack in the pursuit. Press them vigorously, he said, and they will be entirely dispersed and many of them will lay down their arms. He was anxious to take prisoners, feeling confident that most if not all of them would enter his ranks, as had been the case at Cardenas, and as was indeed the case with the few whom we did capture on this occasion. Col. Blumenthal set out accordingly, with Johnson's and Ellis's companies. After about an hour and a half, feeling uneasy lest Blumenthal, who did not speak English, might have difficulty in making himself obeyed by his men, I asked, and received from the General, permission to follow to his assistance. I rode after them about three miles an a half, over a road strewn with proof of the disorderly flight of the enemy, muskets, cartridge-boxes, knapsacks, bayonets, wounded men, &c. &c., when I met a body of men coming in our direction, but marching along without any military order, and at a great distance I was saluted by a shot from them. Recognizing them as our men, I signed and shouted to them, and when we had approached each other sufficiently near for them to know me, they gave me the less unpleasant salutation of a hurrah. Inquiring the reason of their return, it was told me that the men were not willing to go on, that they were tired, and having seen a body of the enemy at a distance, did not think themselves strong enough to separate farther from the main body, but on the other hand thought that they had done fighting enough for the morning. In a word, they would not go; the weather is hot, the men fatigued, and of course their officers could not make them do so against their own judgment and will. Poor Blumenthal was in greater rage at this, because he had no means of persuading where they would not obey. I addressed them, asking if they were not the same brave fellows who had so nobly done their duty this morning,--who, though so small a body of undisciplined men, had put to flight four times their number of the best troops of the Spanish army,--whether they were not the men of Las Pozas!--and whether they were going now within so short a time to change into cowards, and retreat on the appearance of a few broken down Spanish soldiers, who only had not had speed and strength enough to keep up with the rest in their flight. The word coward which I used rather intemperately, as it was certainly most unjust, came pretty near producing a mutiny and costing me my own life on the spot, but I continued: "Come along, boys, let us go and show the enemy we cannot only fight and gain victories, but know how to follow them up. Besides, remember Col. Crittenden and all our comrades with him. They must be very near, and they may be attacked and perhaps destroyed, when we are able not only to save them, but to destroy the enemy, hemming him in between Crittenden in the front, and us in the rear. They are in complete panic from their defeat this morning, and will surrender to our mercy, and we shall have gained one of the most splendid victories and secured the triumph of our cause. I will go ahead--follow me." This is the substance of what I urged as well as I could, and they, or part of them, did begin to follow me; but a few moments after, while I was congratulating myself on the success of my appeal, I looked back, and behold the men were again consulting on the subject. "What do you think?" I heard from one to another, as I rode back to them. "I think not, we are not strong enough," would be the reply. "I think so too," added a third;--in a word, they would not go, though I was satisfied that no resistance of any account would have been made to us. To punish insubordination under our circumstances was out of the question. The feelings with which I found myself thus compelled to return to Las Pozas, and, instead of announcing the consummation of our victory, and bringing back Crittenden, to report to the General such a fatal act and proof of the subordination of our men. I shall not attempt to describe. My mind full of evil augury, anxiety about Crittenden, and misgivings now for ourselves, I rode along with our straggling band.

Anxious, however, to make another effort in Crittenden behalf, I tried to find a few who would consent to encounter the risk of going in search of him to inform him of our victory, and give him another direction to rejoin us. Five volunteers undertook it, and, with my pocket writing case, I wrote an order to Crittenden in the General's name, that he must, under any circumstances, join us at Las Pozas before twelve that night, if he would not risk being cut off. The five volunteers for this hazardous service set out, being advised to keep the foot path on the left of the main road, and in case of hearing any sounds of an engagement, to send a man back at all speed with the notice; and I rode on towards our camp, consoling myself with hope in Crittenden's behalf from this step.

As I approached the camp somewhat in advance of the men, the General, thinking me the bearer of good tidings, from this unexpected return, rode out in impatience to meet me. His mortification and regret at the account I had given him, were, of course very great. As we rode into Las Pozas our brave and ever good-humored Col. Haynes received us with his troops, with hurrahs, and cheers for General Lopez and his followers. The General could not exhibit the feelings with which he was in his heart deeply moved, but I could see that those cheers gave him little consolation. After a short consultation, General Lopez, entertaining little confidence of the successful execution of the attempt by the five volunteers who had set out after Crittenden, despatched another similar order to him by an inhabitant of Las Pozas, promising him a hundred dollars for Crittenden's answer, and to burn his house to the ground if he failed to bring one back.

We next went the round of visiting our wounded comrades; for whom everything possible for the alleviation of their sufferings was done. The same care was taken of the wounded of the enemy as of our own. This humanity, shown on our side, was afterwards repaid by the massacre and mutilation of our wounded who fell into the enemies hands, even thought their own wounded men were found side by side with ours to prove the treatment they had received!

Our brave Pragay we visited with deep emotion. Knowing himself to be mortally wounded, and that he would soon have to be left behind to the tender mercies of Spanish barbarity, from the impossibility of the conveyance of wounded in such movements as our little band had to make, he was anxious to put an end to his sufferings, and to avoid falling alive into the enemies power. He took a pistol, and placing it to his head, pulled the trigger, with the words, "Viva la libertad de Cuba!" before he could be interrupted. The pistol missed fire, though the cap exploded. In a second attempt he was prevented by the General.

In the course of the morning General Lopez sent out the Hungarians as a scouting party to penetrate the woods. They brought in six Spanish soldiers unwounded. The General spoke to them, and told them the regret with which he had seen them fighting foolishly on the side of tyranny, and against their own true friends, who had come to give liberty to them as well as to the people of the country; and his grief that it should have caused the lives of so many of them. Them men told him that many of them would have been glad to join him if it had been in their power, and they themselves accordingly entered with apparent alacrity into our ranks. They were attached to the Cuban Company, which already contained about a dozen of the soldiers who had joined General Lopez at Cardenas, and they did their duty very well until after our other battle of Frias, when our position being then very discouraging to them, and the men worn out with our fatigues and hardships, they dropped off. There is doubt that if the General had been able to make good an established foothold, and to afford time for desertion, a good many Spanish soldiers would have joined us. So several of them afterwards privately said to myself and to others of us, when we were in their hands as prisoners. Notwithstanding the discouraging circumstances, a couple of carbineers did afterwards join us at Frias.

The afternoon and evening wore on, amidst the attentions to the wounded, the refreshment of our men, and anxious looking out for some news about Crittenden. The messenger sent out to him did not return. The five volunteers return about nine o'clock, reporting that they had seen Spanish soldiers in too great force for them to penetrate further, and had neither see nor heard anything of Crittenden. All proper military dispositions were taken for the night. At last, at about half-past ten, a couple of men came into our camp, Rekendorf and Gonsalez, with a negro guide, and informed us that Captain Kelly, with his company, 40 men, which had formed part of Crittenden's division, were lying concealed in the woods, about a couple of miles distance. They had been afraid to come forward till they should be satisfied by whom the village was occupied, whether by Spanish troops or by the Expeditionaries. From these we learned what had befallen them, since our separation, the reception of the carts and of the General's orders by Crittenden, as I have before related; his unfortunate hesitation and decision not to move without the baggage, and his consequent delay in getting forward; and finally his having halted at the tienda, or country store, about half way (five miles) from Morillo to Las Pozas. They told us that while they were there, preparing breakfast, a body of Spanish troops suddenly made its appearance on the road, coming from the direction of Las Pozas, attacking them with a volley of musketry. This body of troops was repulsed by a single volley or two from Crittenden's men, and after a short period of waiting, during which nothing further was seen, Crittenden took 80 men with him and struck into the wood to pursue the enemy, leaving Captain Kelly, with 40 men (including them) at the tienda. From this time they had neither seen nor heard anything further of them. After waiting a long time, and vainly sending a few men out to look for them, the enemy having re-appeared in a larger force, and their position being almost surrounded by them, Kelly had struck off for Las Pozas, under the guidance of the negro driver of the carts, by a by-path through the woods. Uncertain what state of things might exist with us, the men had lain concealed at a distance of about a couple of miles from the village till dark, and they too had come forward with their negro guide to explore the village. On approaching it, the guide had first cautiously moved up to its outskirts, and had returned to tell them that it was occupied by blue shirts. They had then come freely forward, knowing that that meant Lopez and the Expedition.

This was the narrative which gave us our first intelligence of Crittenden's division. It, of course, left us still uncertain as to his fate. What could have become of him? Had he been overpowered by the Spanish troops? We found it difficult to believe so. It certainly could not have been so by those who had been so thoroughly beaten and cut up by us; they were too thoroughly demoralized to have been any longer formidable. Only a small body of troops had been seen before Crittenden separated from Kelly, and these had merely exchanged a few shots. This had been at about the same time that we were attacked at Las Pozas. Could Crittenden's 80 men, in pursuing them, have fallen into engagement with the main body in their retreat or flight from before us at Las Pozas, and have been cut to pieces and dispersed by them? Then why had Kelly neither heard any firing, nor seen any more of them? Why had no fugitives fallen by to the tienda where Kelly had been left with the baggage? Either victory or defeat must have at least made it self apparent, either to us, at Las Pozas, or to Kelly, at the tienda. What could it mean? This was the strange and alarming complexity in which General Lopez was placed by this intelligence, which, while it brought him in safety one-third of Crittenden's division, left him extremely uneasy about the other two-thirds. We still indulged a hope that, since at the last news he had repulsed the enemy, and had even moved in pursuit of him, he had kept his corps together, and, in pursuance of his orders to join us at Las Pozas, might still come in under cover of the darkness, as Capt. Kelly had done.

It was several days before the General received the sad confirmation of his worst fears, in learning that Crittenden had fallen back to the shore, and had been taken with over 50 men, in the launches on which they had attempted to leave the island. Many of Kelly's men had wished to do the same thing, and had been with great difficulty prevented, and prevailed upon to move in the opposite direction towards us at Las Pozas. Crittenden's party probably had insisted with their officers upon pursuing that course. It must have happened somewhat in this manner. General Enna, after landing at Bahia Honda about fifteen miles to the eastward⁽³⁾ and marched at once to crush us, as he expected, at Las Pozas. The cross road from Morillo to Las Pozas, by which we had marched, and Crittenden had to march, does not proceed straight from one point to the other, but enters the high road from Bahia Honda to Las Pozas almost at right angles, at a short distance before reaching the latter place, so that, on leaving Las Pozas for Morillo, you so buy the Bahia Honda road eastward, and then soon turn off by a cross-road to the left, striking down the coast.

When Enna reached the point just referred to, where the Morillo cross-road enters the main-road by which he was marching, knowing that a detachment of the Expedition had been left at Morillo, in charge of the baggage, and probably advised that it had not yet rejoined the main body at Las Pozas, he detached a single company down the road towards Morillo. (This we learned from the soldiers and a serjeant whom we captured after our battle, as also afterwards from the Spaniards, after our own capture.) In all probability his idea was that this company was to hold that rear detachment of ours in check, while he should spring suddenly upon us, thus weakened as we were, and not expecting an attack. After breakfasting upon us at Las Pozas, he could, of course, then make but a light dinner of our rear, thus cut off from our main body, and then return to sup on the glory of the Expedition destroyed at two blows, in a single Napoleonic day. It was otherwise fated for General Enna! Thus it was that a small force of soldiers, proceeding down on the road towards Morillo, came upon Crittenden at the tienda, at about the same time that Enna attacked us in the village. After suffering somewhat from Crittenden's return of their volley, they undoubtedly fell back, as they were in no force to press an attack, and it was indeed not very long before their commanding officer received an order form General Enna to rejoin him, when he found the breakfast at Las Pozas so indigestible. This explains why Kelly, as he states in his public narrative, heard no further firing after Crittenden struck into the woods in pursuit of the enemy, who had thus just shown himself and been repulsed. It was perhaps partly with a view to caution in observing the force of the enemy, as well as for the purpose of coming upon them in flank, that he had led his eighty men into the woods, instead of pushing straight after them on the road. Ignorant of what force they represented, he would thus be able to get a further sight of them, and of what might lie beyond the point at which they had appeared at disappeared; himself screened meanwhile by the wood under cover of which he moved. He had thus, probably, after a while come in view of large bodies of troops, who, after being beaten at Las Pozas, but not pursued, (for the reason before specified,) had been rallied and collected again by their officer, to await the arrival of reinforcements and artillery from Havana. Then, it must have been that they got discouraged, and determined to push back for the launches on the shore, which (most unfortunately!) were only five miles distant. How far this terribly mistaken course may have been forced upon the gallant officers of that little band by the will of their undisciplined followers (as on board the Creole, after leaving Cardenas,) or how far the former may have united in regarding it then as their duty, in such a discouraging aspect affairs, to adopt that seemly only chance left of saving their men, when they found a large force of troops interposed between them and the General, can now never be known on earth. It is not unlikely that, finding such a force of troops already interposed between them and the main body of the Expedition, on route by which the latter had march inland, they may have presumed that General Lopez had been attacked and destroyed; that all was lost; and that retreat to the shore was all that remained for them to think of. Poor Crittenden felt no doubt a heavy responsibility for the lives of so many of the finest young men of New Orleans, who composed his immediate command. The next that is heard of them is that they are captured in the launches! They could not have had any further fighting, because no mention of any is made in any of the reports of the Spanish officers, who never fail to make a grand flourish over the slightest possible pretext for one. No molestation to their taking the boats could have occurred without making itself very conspicuously known. Kelly must have left the tienda by the time Crittenden's portion of the body adopted this course, since it is very sure that Crittenden would never have abandoned him there in that way. After determining upon that course, it is more likely that they proceeded towards the shore under cover of the woods, than by the road, though it is beyond a doubt that he must have sent some of his men Kelly to warn and advise him--a notice which, if it was so sent, Kelly fortunately missed, because no doubt had he then withdrawn from the tienda, and was engaged in making his own way by a by-path through the woods, with the advantage of the negro guide, in the other directions towards the General at Las Pozas. Or perhaps Crittenden may not have determined on that course, until after returning to the tienda, he found it abandoned, so that he then had no guide to conduct him by any roundabout way in an attempt to rejoin his comrades and commander. Most probably the retreat to the boats was forced on Crittenden by his men. In such a retreat to the shore, more or less of stragglers would naturally fall off from his principal body. Some would see better chances in shifting for themselves in the woods, than in remaining united with an escaping body to small for effective action and too large for concealment. Some, too, probably failed in finding boats. Thus is happened that the number actually taken by steamboat, which pounced upon them in a defenceless condition in the water, was but a little over 50, though 80 was the number with which Crittenden had started when he left Kelly.

The above must have been substantially the mode in which that sad and fatal disaster came about--fatal to them, fatal to us, fatal to the enterprise! Fated, as well as fatal, I may call it. One of poor Crittenden's letters, written back to the United States by the Pampero, was stamped with a character of discouraging presentiment; and the shadow of that self-realizing expectation of death seems to have rested oppressively on his mind, obscuring his perception of his evident military duty to execute the orders which had been so urgently addressed to him, and causing his steps to linger so heavily when they should have sped so vigorously. Why, why, alas! did the next morning, and at an advanced hour, find him at the tienda preparing for breakfast when he was attacked! His evil genius seems to have been upon him, pressing him back from Las Pozas, where he would have found not only safety but victory, to conduct him to that fated spot, frowned over by the battlements of Atares where swift murderers were waiting to lay him low, though they could not make him kneel. Alas for them, alas for us, and alas, I repeat, for the enterprise, to which this was its true death wound! Oh, that, even after having failed to join us before the battle, he had come up to dash upon the enemy's rear while that fight was in progress, or to attack them from the opposite direction after the utter demoralization into which their slaughter and flight at Las Pozas had thrown them! Slowly as his march had lingered, had he been but a little further forward, the summons of his General's musketry would have brought him on then at double quick time, if his orders had failed to do so. And even though this brilliant and glorious chance was lost, yet had not his men become too soon and mistakenly discouraged by appearances,--had they not to hastily presumed us to be destroyed and the Expedition ruin, when, in truth, five miles further forward, we were victorious, and the cause brilliantly triumphant but for the supervention of their disaster to change the aspect of the whole,--had they, I say, but joined us, even after the battle, as Kelly's company did, they would have found present safety and probably ultimate success. The bloody tragedy of the 16^th would never have shocked the world, paralysed Cuba, and desolated many a loving heart that will long continue to mourn the noble youths of that ill-starred band.

Upon the aggravation which these events added to our regret of the insubordinate refusal of the two companies which the General had sent out under Col. Blumenthal, after the battle, to follow up the enemy, and to join and bring up Crittenden, as I have above related, I need not remark. The reader will readily judge what must then have been the bitterness of the good and brave old man's feelings, and my participation in them. If that detachment had pushed on, it would in all probability have saved Crittenden, to whom the sound of their musketry, and the fugitive soldiers whom they would have driven before them, would have announced their approach, and they would have dispersed or received the surrender of a large part of the demoralized Spanish troops, who, then more than ready to fly at a gleam of our musket barrels, would have found themselves between two of our fires. Our ranks would have been strengthened from the prisoners who would have surrendered; the unity and cohesion of the troops would have been broken up; and after the carnage made by us in the first battle, the government would have been slow to lead fresh ones against our ranks recruited by such contagious desertion; or if it had ventured to do so, the exultation of the first victory would have half won the second. The triumph of the day would have been complete. The Creoles would have felt safe in coming boldly forward. The news would have gone like a wild-fire signal over the Island. In every Spanish regiment Lopez's old prestige would have worked with renewed power and charm. He would have been able to carry out his plan of campaign, which I have stated above, with the added advantage of having struck a stunning blow to the government with his first step on the soil. Indeed he would have been able then to do still better, and to have advanced upon Havana, as he would then in all probability have done, for he was an energetic and vigorous soldier in his military ideas, as well as fearless in their execution. The aspect of everything would probably have changed. For weal or for wo, all these incalculable consequences hinged upon Crittenden and his men! His fate was our ruin, and the ruin of the enterprise. An insubordination, both on his side and on the side of our men, was clearly and solely the it cause,--insubordination, that fatal military evil and cardinal military error, for which no bravery can afford an equivalent, and which was especially the indispensable condition of success or safety to such an enterprise as ours!

Poor Crittenden's capture, in boats in the act of attempting to escape, followed up by the massacre of Atares, necessarily had the effect, not merely of neutralizing, but, so far as regarded the moral influence, of reversing all the good effects of our victory at Las Pozas. It presented the whole enterprise to the people of Cuba, at its very first flush, as a failure, as a thing crushed and overwhelmed in disaster at its very outset. It enable the government to convert its defeat into a pretended victory,--for who could imagine otherwise, when a body of fifty fugitives were thus captured in boats, and a thunder-clap report of the fact made to the people of the Island in the form of their summary execution? It secured the fidelity of the troops, the terrified submission of the people both of country and city. Whatever might have been the dispositious of either, what else was then to be expected but that all who might have intended to join General Lopez, whom they expected to bring them arms, should then shrink back again quiet and silent, and should be unwilling to throw away their lives and property, and jeopard the existence of their families, by joining a now hopeless little band of supposed beaten fugitives? The heroism of such self-sacrifice without the hope of success or good, is not to be looked for from the mass of men of any country.

The fate of Crittenden, I repeat, was the ruin of the Expedition. But for that wretched disaster, I firmly believe that the whole would have taken a very different direction. So closely sometimes do historical events graze variations which would have reversed the destines of nations!

If Crittenden had executed the General's order to push forward without the heavy baggage,----

If, even after determining to bring it along (the distance being only nine or ten miles) he had pressed properly forward, instead of being found by the enemy at an advanced hour of the next morning, at a point only about half way,----

If, after repulsing the enemy, his men had made in the direction of Las Pozas, as did Kelly's company, instead of becoming needlessly discouraged, and falling back to the launches on the shore,----

And finally, if our two companies sent out to pursue the enemy and unite with Crittenden, had obeyed orders and entreaties to do so, instead of insubordinately judging for themselves that they were not strong enough, and that they had done their sufficient share of fighting,----

If, I say, any one of these ifs had occurred, as they all ought to have occurred, how different might, how different probably would have been the turn and result of the whole enterprise!

But to return to my narrative:---When diverted from it into these reflections I was at the point when Rekendorf and Gonsalez, with their negro guide, came into our camp at Las Pozas, at a late hour in the evening after the battle, bringing us the first intelligence of what had occurred to the rear-guard, and announcing the proximity of that fragment of it, Captain Kelly's company. After receiving their report, the General ordered me at once to accompany the negro guide to the place where Kelly's company was lying in concealment and expectation, and bring them into Las Pozas, which place he intended to evacuate without delay. We went along by the by-path through the wood already spoken of as having covered our left during the battle. After a smart walk of over a half an hour, the old negro told me we were now at the place. No sound or trace of other living souls than ourselves two, broke the solitude, till I gave the signal I had been directed to use, which was a loud whistle. It was at once answered for the interior of the wood, where the whole company was lying concealed, most of them being asleep, and Captain Kelly came forward, and repeated to me a narrative of all that had befallen him and his men. I asked how many men he had. He answered that he did not know the precise number, but that they were about forty. On his call they came forward, we counted them, and I inquired with care if all were present, as we were about to evacuate Las Pozas, and any man remaining behind would probably fall into the hands of the enemy. They were stated to be all right, and we all proceeded to the village, which we reached at about 12 o'clock, without further accident. The next day I had the mortification and distress to learn that four men had been left behind. They had doubtless been in heavy sleep, perhaps a little apart, had not heard the summons, had not been missed in the count of the men,--and we never saw them more.

The painful hour had now come for parting with our wounded comrades, whom we were compelled to leave behind at Las Pozas; among them Pragay and Gotay. To carry them with us was of course impossible, over such mountain roads and passes as we had to traverse, destitute of any facilities for such transportation. To leave a guard behind, equally so. We could only trust to the hope that Spaniards might for once belie their character for bloody cruelty, and at least so far respect the decencies of common humanity, as to spare the lives of the wounded; especially after the brotherly kindness which their own wounded had received at our hands, and which they remained their side by side with ours to attest. The General left a message commending them to the humanity of the Spanish officers in command. Poor Pragay spared us the grief of witnessing the execution of his own purpose, in which he had before been prevented by General Lopez. Our parting was a bitter trial to my heart. We had shared in the glory of many a good day together in Hungary, and had together bid our sorrowful adieu to our betrayed and fallen country. Principles and sentiments partly analogous had made us stand again side by side in the cause of liberty in this enterprise--and now to have to leave him thus! He gave me his watch, diamond ring, and a snuff box, and his parting words were that he wished us success, but was doubtful of it, that if I should not perish on the battle field, and should hereafter write about the affair, I should tell his friends, in whatever I might write, that he had done his duty; that he was not sorry to die, but only very sorry that he could not continue with us, to be serviceable to us; and that he recommended our countrymen to me. I could only wring his hand in silence, as I turned from him. I hope never, in future life, to know a harder pang.

He had indeed done his duty, as the noble gentleman, soldier, and patriot lover of liberty, that he was. He lies buried (as I have since learned) beneath a large tree on the knoll on the left of the entrance of the village. The monument of nature now shades the spot; but long before it shall decay I trust that human gratitude will rear there another, deeply inscribed with the name PRAGAY.

With great regret, too, we bade adieu to Gotay. His company, presenting the singularity of an American company under a Cuban officer, was much attached to him. We had no better soldier nor officer than Gotay. He, too, rests in the same grave under the old jaguey tree, with its strangely irregular and twisted trunk and its spreading branches.⁽⁴⁾ His name, too, well deserves a memorable place on the future monument that shall mark the spot thus consecrated by heroic ashes.

We afterwards learned that on the entrance of the Spaniards the next day, they massacred all our wounded. They not only massacred, they outraged and mutilated their dead bodies as the coward ferocity of Spanish soldiers alone knows how. Decency forbids me to particularize. They had run well the day before. They took a befitting revenge the day after. But both Pragay and Gotay escaped from them, and though they left their lifeless remains behind, their gallant spirits knew no insult from such base enemies. As the soldiers entered the house where Pragay was lying, he despatched himself by striking at his own throat. Gotay, at the same time, put a pistol to his head.

A published despatch of the Spanish officer in command of the body which entered Las Pozas the next day and murdered and wounded, states, as I am told, that a guard of about twenty men had been there over the hospital, whom they destroyed. It was a lie. Of course it was an absurd one.

1. I understand that this circumstance has not been before mentioned in the newspaper accounts which have appeared since the Expedition. A statement given by the New Orleans Picayune, at second-hand, from an oral narrative by Captain Kelly, says at the tienda, or country store, where Crittenden halted on the following morning, he received an order to that effect from the General, brought back to him by a messenger, whom he had sent forward for instructions. The language of that account is: "Lopez ordered Col. C. to abandon his baggage, ammunition, &c., and to join him at once, as he expected a battle every moment, and wanted Crittenden to attack the enemy in the rear and flank. The latter, however, was loth to abandon the ammunition, and while deliberating he was suddenly attacked by a party of Spanish soldiers, who were repulsed. There is some mistake here, probably due to the second-hand character of the narrative. No messenger came to us from Crittenden, nor could he have sent for "instructions;" nor could the General have sent any such word about expectation of a battle, and an order to attack in the rear and flank. In the first place, poor Crittenden would not have hesitated and deliberated over such an order; and in he second place, we had no such expectation that morning. On the contrary we were completely surprised by the attack upon us at Las Pozas (how it happened is presently related,) and the General's object in thus hurrying Crittenden forward at the sacrifice of the powder and muskets, was to strike rapidly into the interior, in pursuance of the general plan of operations above stated. I was constantly with the General at his aid-de-camp, with the advantage of being able to communicate in all the languages, American, Spanish, German, Italian, and Hungarian, spoken in our little army; and it is likely that I could have been ignorant of a messenger from Crittenden;--and, under the stringent orders he already had, how could he have sent for "instructions?" I wrote the dispatch above spoken of as having been sent back to him shortly after the starting of the carts, and I positively ascertained, by inquiries after the fragment of his force reached us under Kelly, that the order had been received by him an hour before the carts. It is possible that Captain Kelly may not have known of it till the next morning at the tienda, and that at that place poor Crittenden's fatal "deliberations" about executing an order from his General may have been renewed, and some may have presumed that he had just received the order. Respecting this messenger sent by Crittenden for "instructions," if any was sent by him (certainly none arrived) it could only have been to ask "instructions" whether he should obey the orders he had already received or not, in other words, perhaps, to remonstrate against leaving the baggage, or something of that kind. His orders, when he was left at Morillo, for a separation not expected to exceed a few hours, were, to push forward promptly as soon as he should receive the carts; and, as I have already said, still another order was sent to him shortly after the despatching of the carts, which reached him before them, not only ordering him to push forward, but to abandon the heavy part of the baggage for the purpose of doing so the more quickly, and to rejoin by all means in the course of the night (the distance being only from three to three and a half leagues.) If and word was brought to him at the tienda that morning to the effect that he must push forward immediately, as the General was expecting a battle; it could only have been some volunteer information brought to him by some peasant, who, knowing of Enna's advance that night from Bahia Honda, and consequently anticipating a battle at Las Pozas in the morning, may have carried notice to that effect to Crittenden. Something of this kind reaching Crittenden that morning may have given rise to the mistake above mention on the part of Captain Kelly, about a supposed messenger from Crittenden to the General meeting him at the tienda on his return. But the main fact in the matter is that Crittenden ought never have been found at the tienda between eight and nine o'clock on that morning. The carts could not have reached him later than eight o'clock the previous evening. Even bringing forward the baggage, he ought to have been in Las Pozas shortly after midnight, having the cool night for a march of about nine or ten miles, over a sandy but tolerable road, which we had march in between four and five hours, constantly stopping to close up, and in consequence of mid-day heat, making a long halt at about half-way.

2. A person named Van Vechten, a lieutenant in the Expedition--I believe I may say the only coward in it,--has published, among other falsehoods, that General Lopez rode about flogging the men up to the work with a cowhide. Of course a falsehood so preposterous sufficiently contradicted itself. Possibly, this Van Vechten may have on some occasion seen the old General patting, in a familiar and friendly way, the shoulders of some of the men, when particularly pleased with their conduct a gesture which was indeed a frequent mode with him of supplying his want of English words for the purpose, and this Van Vechten perhaps may have mistaken for a cowhide, a light riding whip which was Lopez's only personal weapon in the battle, (his sword and pistols being with the baggage left under Crittenden's charge,) and he may have imagined the act to be that of flogging. If so, while the suggestion affords a slight imaginable basis for the abominable story issued by him, it at the same time illustrates the state of mind with which we must have witnessed what he thus relates.

3. Enna came very nigh missing us altogether. He had left Havana without knowing where we landed, and was steaming along towards the more western part of the Vuelta Abajo. He probably had no idea that Lopez would have dared to land thus almost under the guns of Havana. It was from the fort at the entrance of Bahia Honda that he learned what I have related above as having taken place the evening before, when our boat had approached the fort, and on being hailed had rowed quickly back to the steamer in the offing. Of course Enna then knew that this was attempt to feel for a landing place, and that we could not then be far off. He at once entered Bahia Honda, and landed at the town of that name, at the head of the bay, and taking along the troops that were there, and near there, and then learning where we were, and marched at once upon us, by the high road leading from that place to Las Pozas. It was on his thus landing that a friendly peasant rode over with the news of it to General Lopez, the reception of which shortly after the carts had started for Crittenden, caused the General to despatch him the order above mentioned, to leave the heavy baggage and push forward immediately to join him. But for thus receiving that intelligence of our landing, from that fort, Enna would have gone on to the westward, and General Lopez would have had plenty of time to carry out his plan of operations. What important changes are often produced by slight accidents in military affairs.

4. In an early forthcoming number of Harper's Magazine will be found a woodcut representing the entrance of the village of Las Pozas, from a drawing by a very talented young German artist, Mr. Hoefler, who was in that part of Cuba at the time of the expedition, filling his portfolio with admirable sketches of Cuban scenery and vegetation, &c. On the right of the drawing is a large old jaguey tree, with a partial view of the knoll or eminence on which the Cuban Company was posted in the battle. Just behind it is a house, on the street of the village. To that house Pragay was carried when wounded. Under that old tree, at a spot indicated in the drawing, both Pragay and Gotay were buried, as I have since learned. A very beautiful old painting by Hoefler, from that sketch of Las Pozas, is now in the possession of Fred. A. Spies, Esq., of Brooklyn, New York. Colonel Downman and Captain Obero were carefully buried by General Lopez's direction, with such precautions as to secure future identification of the spot, under the supervision of Montoro, a fine young Cuban gentleman, and one of Oberto's officers, now in New Orleans, having been liberated with the rest of the American prisoners at Vigo in Spain. He was included with the rest as a naturalized American Citizen