Immediately Around San
Juan Hill Itself There Has Been Some Attempt Made To Preserve The
Ground As A Public Park.
A barbed-wire fence, with a gateway,
encircles the block-house, which has been converted into a home for
The caretaker of the park, and then, skirting the road to Santiago to
include the tree under which the surrender was arranged, stretches to
the left of the block-house to protect a monument. This monument was
erected by Americans to commemorate the battle. It is now rapidly
falling to pieces, but there still is enough of it intact to show the
pencilled scribblings and autographs of tourists who did not take
part in the battle, but who in this public manner show that they
approve of its results. The public park is less than a quarter of a
mile square. Except for it no other effort has been made either by
Cubans or Americans to designate the lines that once encircled and
menaced Santiago, and Nature, always at her best under a tropical
sun, has done all in her power to disguise and forever obliterate the
scene of the army's one battle. Those features which still remain
unchanged are very few. The Treaty Tree, now surrounded by a tall
fence, is one, the block-house is another. The little lake in which,
even when the bullets were dropping, the men used to bathe and wash
their clothes, the big iron sugar kettle that gave a new name to
Kettle Hill, and here and there a trench hardly deeper than a
ploughed furrow, and nearly hidden by growing plants, are the few
landmarks that remain.
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