The Siboney-Santiago road, at that time and for several days thereafter, was comparatively dry and in fairly good condition. It had to be widened a little in some places, and a company or two of soldiers from the Tenth Cavalry were working on it just beyond the Rough Riders' camp; but, as far as we went, loaded army wagons could get over it without the least difficulty. Supplies at the front, nevertheless, were very short. Lieutenant-Colonel Roosevelt told me that his command had only enough hard bread and bacon for that night's supper, and that if more did not come before dark there would be no breakfast for them in the morning. I cannot now remember whether we met a supply-train on our way back to Siboney, or not; but I think not.
At the intersection of the road with the mesa trail, we stopped for a few moments to look over the battle-field of Guasimas. Evidences and traces of the fight, in the shape of cartridge-shells and clips, bullet-splintered trees, improvised stretchers, and blood-soaked clothes and bandages, were to be seen almost everywhere, and particularly on the trail along which the Rough Riders had advanced. At one spot, in a little hollow or depression of the trail, from which one could see out into an open field about one hundred yards distant, the ground was completely covered with cartridge-shells and-clips from both Mauser and Krag-Jorgensen rifles. A squad of Spaniards had apparently used the hollow as a place of shelter first, and had fired two or three hundred shots from it, strewing the ground with the clips and brass shells of their Mauser cartridges. Then the Rough Riders had evidently driven them out and occupied the hollow themselves, firing two or three hundred more shots, and covering the yellow cartridge-shells of the Mauser rifles with a silvery layer of empty tubes from the Krag-Jorgensens. It looked as if one might pick up a bushel or two of these shells in an area ten or fifteen feet square.
A short distance from the intersection of the trail with the road was a large grave-shaped mound of fresh earth, under which had been buried together eight of the men killed on our side during the fight. There had been no time, apparently, to prepare and put up an inscribed headboard to show who the dead men were, but some of their comrades had carefully collected two or three hundred stones and pebbles--things not easy to find in a tropical jungle--and had laid them close together on the burial-mound in the form of a long cross.