to cover ports having railroad communication with Havana, as follows :

Off Havana :-New York, Iowa, Wilmington, Helena, Dolphin, Mayflower, Vesuvius, Ericsson, Porter, and such auxiliaries as may be designated.

Off Mariel:-Nashville, Castine, and auxiliaries to be designated.

Chart of Matanzas Bay.

Off Matanzas:-Amphitrite, Cincinnati, Dupont, Winslow, and auxiliaries to be designated. Cardenas :-Newport, Machias, Foote, Cushing, and auxiliaries to be designated.

Indiana, Marblehead, Detroit, and Mangrove, a separate division for special work, and to blockade Cienfuegos.

This list of blockaders must have special

consideration. They were to close Cuban ports for the time being against all comers, including merchant ships having a speed of perhaps fifteen knots, and yet there was the Amphitrite, with a speed at best of ten knots, and to her were added the Puritan and Terror, of a like speed. This is not to criticise the Admiral. He had to use the ships provided, and his disposition of them met the entire approval of all foreign critics who considered the matter. What is desired is to point out that we had to use our coast defence monitors for blockading foreign ports, because our naval policy had failed to provide for the emergency that was thrust upon us, and that what the navy eventually accomplished was done by the ability of men who were compelled to work with inadequate tools.

Not only did we use monitors and battleships on the blockade, we started in with four torpedo-boats. Only those who understand that a blockader should be able to live outside of the blockaded port for weeks without renewing its supplies of coal, can understand the absurdity of calling torpedo-boats efficient blockaders—torpedo-boats built solely for sprinting dashes by night, or through the smoke of battle, and wholly unable to carry coal or other supplies for blockade work.

Nor is that all. It was not only that we

and staves.

She was bound to Barcelona. The Catalina was captured by the Detroit the same morning to the westward of Havana. Meantime a number of small coasting schooners and sloops were taken. They were of no account as prizes, but the actions of the captured crews were instructive. These men, in most cases, had been enrolled in the Spanish naval reserve, and the papers in the vessels proved it. As their crews saw these proofs in our hands that they were naval men, they became instantly and utterly dejected. Their hopeless grief was so manifest that our officers who talked the language questioned them as to the cause, and in every case learned that they all expected to be shot to death. That prisoners of war might have their lives spared was something unbelievable to these Spanish naval reserves. Nor was it the ignorant schooner-men alone who were distressed in that fashion, for when a boat with a Spanish army lieutenant named Pedro Fernandez on board was taken, off Matanzas, a little later, the officer at once gave up all hope of life. Assurances that he was entirely safe did not quiet him, and it was not until he had had a good breakfast in the ward-room of the flag-ship and had been conducted about the vessel, that he might see her power and the discipline of her crew, and had seen the marines drilled on the quarter-deck, and, finally,

was told that he was to be paroled and sent ashore, that he was fully convinced of the dif ference between our treatment of prisoners and that to which he had been accustomed. Those who know the volatile nature of his race may imagine how he then expressed his thanks and appreciation of the courtesies shown him.

To give in detail the incidents of the capture of the numerous vessels taken in the first two weeks of the war would weary the reader. The work of capturing the smaller vessels failed to incite any special interest in the squadron after the first day or so, but when the torpedo-boat Foote was fired on by the shore-batteries as she was scouting about the harbor of Matanzas, Admiral Sampson determined to reply, and the men heard the news with pleasure. It was a peaceful blockade in its way, but the squadron would resist fire from shore.

At noon on Wednesday, April 27th, the New York, the Puritan, and the Cincinnati steamed slowly into the harbor of Matanzas. The harbor is a bay of the form of a short-legged sock, with its mouth opening to the north and the foot pointing inland south of west. It is about three miles wide at the coast-line between Sabanilla Point, on the west, and Cape Maya, on the east, and perhaps five miles deep. It narrows to two miles between Point Gorda and the mouth of Cañamar River, where it