Of The Camps Of Generals Chaffee, Lawton, Bates, Sumner, And Wheeler,
Of Colonels Leonard Wood And Theodore Roosevelt, There Are But The
Slightest Traces.
The Bloody Bend, as some call it, in the San Juan
River, as some call that stream, seems to
Have entirely disappeared.
At least, it certainly was not where it should have been, and the
place the hotel guides point out to unsuspecting tourists bears not
the slightest physical resemblance to that ford. In twelve years,
during one of which there has been in Santiago the most severe
rainfall in sixty years, the San Juan stream has carried away its
banks and the trees that lined them, and the trails that should mark
where the ford once crossed have so altered and so many new ones have
been added, that the exact location of the once famous dressing
station is now most difficult, if not impossible, to determine. To
establish the sites of the old camping grounds is but little less
difficult. The head-quarters of General Wheeler are easy to
recognize, for the reason that the place selected was in a hollow,
and the most unhealthy spot along the five miles of intrenchments.
It is about thirty yards from where the road turns to rise over the
ridge to Santiago, and all the water from the hill pours into it as
into a rain barrel. It was here that Troop G, Third Cavalry, under
Major Hardee, as it was Wheeler's escort, was forced to bivouac, and
where one-third of its number came down with fever.
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