On July 1st, Twelve Years Ago, When The American Army Came Upon It
Out Of The Jungle The Place Wore A Partial Disguise.
It still was an
irregular ridge of smiling, sunny hills with fat, comfortable curves,
and in some places a steep, straight front.
But above the steepest,
highest front frowned an aggressive block-house, and on all the
slopes and along the sky-line were rows of yellow trenches, and at
the base a cruel cat's cradle of barbed wire. It was like the face
of a pretty woman behind the bars of a visor. I find that on the day
of the fight twelve years ago I cabled my paper that San Juan Hill
reminded the Americans of "a sunny orchard in New England." That was
how it may have looked when the regulars were climbing up the steep
front to capture the block-house, and when the cavalry and Rough
Riders, having taken Kettle Hill, were running down its opposite
slope, past the lake, to take that crest of San Juan Hill which lies
to the right of the block-house. It may then have looked like a
sunny New England orchard, but before night fell the intrenching
tools had lent those sunny slopes "a fierce and terrible aspect."
And after that, hour after hour, and day after day, we saw the hill
eaten up by our trenches, hidden by a vast laundry of shelter tents,
and torn apart by bomb-proofs, their jutting roofs of logs and broken
branches weighed down by earth and stones and looking like the pit
mouths to many mines.
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