eyes and mouth were wide open, as if he were amazed and shocked beyond measure by the news of some terrible calamity, and his attitude, as well as the horror-stricken expression of his elongated face, seemed to indicate that, at the very least, he had just found in the paper an announcement of the sudden and violent death of all his family. Below, in quotation marks, were the words "!!! Que BARBARIDAD. !!! Han apresado UN VIVERO." (What BARBARITY!!! They have captured a FISHING-SMACK! ! !)

This is, evidently, a humorous sneer at the trifling value of the prizes taken by the vessels of our blockading fleet off Havana in the early days of the war. But there is more in the Spanish words than can well be brought out in a translation, for the reason that "vivero" means a vessel in which fish are brought from the Yucatan banks alive, in large salt-water tanks. We had been accusing the Spaniards of cruelty and barbarity in · their treatment of the insurgents. The artist "gets back at us," to use a slang phrase, by exclaiming, in pretended horror, "What barbarous cruelty! They have captured a b.at-oad of living fish!”

For a Spanish soldier, that is not bad; and the touch is as delicate in the sneer of the legend as in the technique of the cartoon.

A little further along and higher up, on the same wall, was a carefully executed and beautifully finished life-sized portrait of a tonsured Roman Catholic monk- -a sketch that I should have been glad to frame and hang in my library, if it had only been possible to get it off the wall without breaking the plaster upon which it had been drawn. I thought of trying to photograph it; but the light in the chamber was not strong enough for a snap-shot, and I had no tripod to support my camera during a time exposure.

There were several other sketches and caricatures on the left-hand wall; but none of them were as good as the two that I have described, and, after examining them all carefully, I cast my eyes about the room to see what I could find in the shape of "loot" that would be worth carrying away as a memento of the place. Apart from old shoes, a modern kerosene lamp of glass, a dirty blanket or two, and a co-bed, there seemed to be nothing worth confiscating except a couple of Spanish newspapers hanging against the right-hand wall on a nail. One was "El Imparcial," a sheet as large as the

New York "Sun;" and the other, "La Saeta." an illustrated comic paper about the size of "Punch." They had no intrinsic value, of course, and as "relics" they were not particularly characteristic; but "newspapers from a bastion in Morro Castle" would be interesting, I thought, to some of my journalistic friends at home, so I decided to take them. I put up my hand to lift them off the nail without tearing them, and was amazed to discover that neither nail nor newspapers had any tangible existence. They had been drawn on the plaster, by that confounded soldier-artist, with a lead-pencil! I felt worse deceived and more chagrined than the Greek pony that neighed at the painted horse of Apelles! But I need not have felt so humiliated. Those newspapers would have deceived the elect; and I am not sure that the keenest-sighted proof-reader of the "Imparcial" would not have read and corrected a whole column before he discovered that the paper was plaster and that the letters had been made with a pencil. Major Greene, of the United States Signal Service, to whom I described these counterfeit newspapers, went to the Castle a few days later, and, notwithstanding the fact that he had been forewarned, he tried to take "La Saeta" off he nail. He trusted me enough to believe that one of the papers was deceptive; but he felt sure that a real copy of "La Saeta" had been bung over a counterfeit "Imparcial in order to make the latter look more natural. If the soldier who drew the caricatures, portraits, and newspapers, in that guard-room. escaped shot, shell, and calentura, and returned in safety to Spain, I hope that he may sometime find in a Spanish journal a translation of this article, and thus be made aware of the respectful admiration that I shall always entertain for him and his artistic talents.

In all the rooms of the Castle that had been occupied by soldiers I found, scratched or penciled on the walls, checkerboard calendars on which the days had been successively crossed off; rude pictures and caricatures of persons or things; individual names; and brief reflections or remarks in doggerel rhyme or badly spelled prose, which had been suggested to the writers, apparently, by their unsatisfactory environment. One man, for example, has left on record this valuable piece of advice:

"Unless you have a good, strong 'pull' [mucha influencia]. don't complain that your rations are bad. If you do, you may have

Another, addressing a girl named "Petenera," who seems to have gotten him into trouble, exclaims:

Petenera, my life! Petenera, my heart!
It is all your fault

That I lie here in Morro

Suffering pain and writing my name
On the plastered wall.

JOSE. Probably "Jose" went to see "Petenera without first obtaining leave of absence, and was shut up in one of the gloomy guardrooms of Morro Castle as a punishment.

Another wall-writer, in a philosophic, reflective, and rather melancholy mood, says: Tu me sobreviviras.

Que vale el ser del hombres
Cuando un escrito vale mas.

You [my writing] will last longer than I shall. What is man, when a scratch on the wall outlives him!

It is a fact which, perhaps, may not be wholly unworthy of notice, that among the sketches I saw and the mural inscriptions I copied in all parts of Morro Castle, there was not an indecent picture, nor an improper word, sentence, or line. Spanish soldiers may be cruel; but they do not appear to be vicious or corrupt in the way that soldiers

often are.

In wandering through the corridors and gloomy chambers of the Castle, copying inscriptions on walls and cannon, and exploring out-of-the-way nooks and corners, I spent a large part of the day. I found that the masonry of the fortress had suffered even less from the guns of Admiral Sampson's fleet than I had supposed. The eastern and southeastern faces of the upper cube had been damaged a little; the parapet or battlement of the gun floor had been shattered in one place, and the débris from it had fallen over and partly blocked up the steps leading to that floor from the second story; two or three of the corner turrets had been injured by small shells; and there was a deep scar, or circular pit, in the face of the eastern wall, over the moat, where the masonry had been struck squarely by a heavy projectile; but, with the exception of these comparatively trifling injuries, the old fortress remained intact. Newspaper men described it as "in ruins" or "almost destroyed" half a dozen times in the course of the summer; and the correspondent of a prominent metropolitan journal, who entered the harbor on his dis

the day that Santiago surrendered, did not hesitate to say: "The old fort is a mass of ruins. The stone foundation has been weakened by the shells from the fleet, causing a portion of the Castle to settle from ten to twenty feet. Only the walls on the inner side remain. The terraces have been obliterated and the guns dismounted and buried in the débris. There are great crevices in the supporting walls, and the fort is in a general state of collapse."

How any intelligent man, with eyes and a field-glass, could get such an erroneous impression, or make such wild and reckless statements, I am utterly unable to imagine. As a matter of fact, the fleet never tried or intended to injure the Castle, and all the damage done to it was probably accidental. I have no doubt that Admiral Sampson might have reduced the fortress to the condition that the correspondent so graphically describes-I saw him destroy the stone fort of Aguadores in a few hours, with only four ships-but he discovered, almost as soon as he reached Santiago, that the old Castle was perfectly harmless, and, with the cool selfrestraint of a thoughtful and level-headed naval officer, he determined to save it as a picturesque and interesting relic of the past. Most of the projectiles that struck it were aimed at the eastern battery, the lighthouse, or the barracks on the crest of the bluff behind it; and all the damage accidentally done to it by these shots might easily be repaired in two or three days. If Cuba ever becomes a part of the United States, the people of this country will owe a debt of gratitude to Admiral Sampson for resisting the temptation to show what his guns could do, and for preserving, almost intact, one of the most interesting and striking old castles in the world.

Leaving the fortress through the eastern gateway and crossing the dry moat on a wooden trestle which had taken the place of the drawbridge, I walked along the crest of the bluff toward the eastern battery. It was evident, from the appearance of the lighthouse and the one-story, tile-roofed buildings on the crest of the hill, that, if Morro Castle escaped serious injury, it was not because the gunners of our fleet were unable to hit it. Every other structure in its vicinity had been shattered, riddled, or smashed. The lighthouse, which was a tapering cylinder of three-quarter-inch iron twelve feet in diame

ter at the base and perhaps thirty feet high, had been struck at least twenty or thirty times. The western half of it, from top to bottom, had been carried away bodily; there were eleven shot-holes in the other half; the lantern had been com letely demolished; and the ground, everywhere in the vicinity, was strewn with fragments of iron and glass. The flagstaff of the signal station had been struck twice-slender and difficult to hit as it was-and the walls and roofs of the barracks and ammunition storehouses had been pierced and torn by shot and shell in a dozen different places. It is not likely, of course, that all this damage was done at any one time or in any single bombardment. The gunners of our fleet probably used these buildings as targets, and fired at them, every time they got a chance, just for amusement and practice. The white cylinder of the lighthouse made a particularly good mark, and the eleven shot-holes in the half of it that remained standing showed that Admiral Sampson's gunners found no difficulty in hitting a target ten feet by thirty at a distance of more than a mile. The captain of the Spanish cruiser Vizcaya told Lieutenant Van Duzer, of the battle-ship Iowa, that, at the height of the naval engagement off the mouth of the harbor on the 3d of July, his vessel was struck by a shell, on an average, once a second. He spoke as if he had been greatly surprised by the extraor dinary accuracy of our gunners' fire; but if he had taken one look at that Morro lighthouse, before he ran out of the harbor, he would have known what to expect.

After examining the shattered barracks and the half-demolished lighthouse, I walked on to the so-called "eastern battery," a strong earthwork on the crest of the ridge about 150 yards from the Castle. Here, in a wide trench behind a rampart of earth strengthened with barrels of cement, I found four muzzleloading iron siege-guns of the last century; two modern mortars, like the one that I had seen on the skids near the head of Estrella cove; one smooth-bore cannon dated 1859, and two three-icch breech-loading rifles. The eighteenth-century guns were no more formidable than those on the roof of Morro, but the mortars and three-inch rifles were useful and effective. It was a shell from one of these mortars that killed or wounded eight sailors on the battle-ship Texas. One gun had been dismounted in this battery, but all other damage to it by the fleet had been re

paired. Owing to the fact that its guns were in a wide trench, six or eight feet below the level of the hill-top, it was extremely difficult to hit them; and although Admiral Sampson repeatedly silenced this battery by shelling the gunners out of it, he was never able to destroy it.

The only other fortifications that I was able to find in the vicinity of Morro Castle were two earthworks known respectively as "the western battery" and "the Punta Gorda battery." The western battery, which was situated on the crest of the hill opposite Morro, on the other side of the harbor entrance, contained seven guns of various sizes and dates, but only two of them were modern. The Punta Gorda battery, which occupied a strong position on a bluff inside the harbor and behind the Estrella cove, had only two guns, but both were modern and of high power. In the three batteries--eastern, western, and Punta Gorda-there were only eight pieces of artillery that would be regarded as effective or formidable in modern warfare, and two of these were so small that their projectiles would have made no impression whatever upon a battle-ship, and could hardly have done much damage even to a protected cruiser. Six of these guns were so situated that, although they commanded the outside approach to the bay, they could not possibly hit an enemy that had once passed Morro and entered the channel. The neck of the bottle-shaped harbor, or, in other words, the narrow strait between Morro Castle and the upper bay, had absolutely no defensive intrenchment except the Punta Gorda battery, consisting of two guns taken from the old cruiser Reina Mercedes.

แ Why," it may be asked, "did not Admiral Sampson fight his way into the harbor, if its defenses were so weak?"

Simply because the channel was mined. He might have run past the batteries without serious risk; but in so narrow a strip of water it was impossible to avoid or escape the submarine mines, four of which were very powerful and could be exploded by electricity. He offered to force an entrance if General Shafter would seize the mine station north of Morro; but the General could not do this without changing his plan of campaign. The co-operation of the navy, therefore, was limited to the destruction of Cervera's fleet and the bombardment of the city from the mouth of Aguadores ravine.

GEORGE KENNAN.

"T

HE Leg and Seven Stars" is the name of more than one hotel in England. House-painters are not usually historical scholars, and, in years long after the Dutch Republic of seven States had become a memory, this is the way in which the sign-letterer expressed the ancient and honorable name of "The League of Seven States."

So history suffers. One sage friend whispered in my ear, as he saw gowned and cassocked professors of history at the Congress in the Hague, "Diplomacy is the essence of Jesuitism. History is one-third mutilation, one-third falsehood, and nearly another third prejudice." Nevertheless he expressed faith in this International Congress of Diplomat c History, believing that it would help to a true unveiling of the past.

Certainly the place and time chosen for the inauguration of a world's gathering of historical scholars are happy. For centuries the Dutch Republic, having led all Europe in freedom of conscience and of printing, was chosen as the neutral ground of treaty-making envoys. Here, perhaps, the very word "Congress," as now used, first came into vogue. In the free press of Leyden all diplomatists sought unshackled news and simple facts. Grandly did our own Washington acknowledge Professor Luzac's editorial honesty.

It was a happy thought, too, to invite the searchers after truth in history to meet at the Netherlands' seat of government just when the maiden Queen Wilhelmina assumes her full queenship. In a few days the leagues of decoration in color and miles of illuminating pipe will go the way of the skyrocket stick and the pinwheel stub, but the Congress of History will leave a rich record and start a good impulse. One thing seems certain. Scholars of every land want to know the reality, both in fact and in truth. They would see the past, at least, without the chromatics and strabismus of personal prejudice.

The Congress of over one hundred members met in glad sunshine in the rooms of the First Chamber of the States-General, on

Thursday morning, September 1. It held a general session at nine o'clock on each of the three days, and then after an hour divided into four sections for the reading and discussion of special papers. These pictured the course of events, both known and secret, from the fifteenth to the nineteenth century in (1) all Europe west of Russia; (2) in the Muscovite and Ottoman Empires; (4) in India, China, and Japan. In section third we had the forms of diplomacy analyzed and delineated by men who as friends knew Rome well, and could tell all about protocols, concordats, and the struggle between the forces by the Tiper and those in the States of Europe.

Probably twenty nations were represented. There were Turks, Russians, Japanese, Roumanians, spectacled and straw-haired Germans, sharp-featured Frenchmen, rosycheeked Britons, and Americans of various sorts; yet it looked as if the same tailor had purveyed for all, so monotonous in clothes are the males of to-day. There were women too, and now we may speak of variety. From the gaudiness of white satin gowns and amazing abundance of jewels (despite matin hours) and the short hair and general radical flavor apparent in some, we could turn with patriotic pride to note how quietly elegant and modestly appropriate was the garb of the American ladies.

For, happily, in this Congress, which is permanent and will meet again in Paris in 1900, and publish its proceedings, women may work too. The assessment for males is $4, but for women only $2, except in years of meeting. In the list of members we note the names of our own Ruth Putnam, whose life of William of Orange is now in Dutch as well as English; of Professor Lucy Salmon, of Vassar; of the Duchess of Alva, who in Madrid is the scholarly custodian of the archives of a famous house; and, if we count right on the list, of nearly a dozen others.

The aims and spirit of this fraternity of workers are certainly very delightful and truly commendable. It attempts to unveil and open

archives, to collect and publish original documents, to get at the facts, to give out history as the whole world's property, to make it real. It was opened by no less a personage than the Dutch Minister of Foreign Affairs, while here, serving as hosts, secretaries, and servants in a good cause, are princes, dukes, barons, and men of name and fame as well as of rank. There are excursions and receptions enough to satisfy the social side of scholarly humanity, while the study of physiognomy and the varied workings of many intellects is exhilarating.

The American is here made to feel both proud and humble. How fluent these Europeans are with French and German and English, even though they be born neither in the land of the Gaul, nor of the Teuton, nor of the British! The average American is not polyglot. Neither has any one of us that are present as delegates, this time at least, a learned paper. Perhaps some of us will do better at Paris in 1900. Then, further, we have no history four centuries old. What upstarts of yesterday we are!

Yet we warm with pride as President de Beaufort praises our Motley and Godkin, and as even the closet specialists refer in terms of honor to historical work done beyond sea, and to our very valuable diplomatic publications from Washington. Here are represented the American Historical Association, the Holland Society, and the Southern Historical Society. There sit Judge Truax and General Viele, known to New Yorkers, both with fine faces and no sign of degenerate Americanism. In the semicircle of chairs opposite the President's tribune one sees a typical Virginia gentleman. It is Patrick Henry's grandson, the Hon. William Wirt Henry, and beside him are wife and daughter, while close at hand are Professor Haskins, the scholar in medieval writings, and Professor and Mrs. Henry Alexander White, of Washington and Lee University. In elegant French, Mr. Gustavus Whiteley, of Baltimore, speaks (unofficially, as do all delegates of governments) on behalf of President McK.nley and the American delegation. Of "The League of Seven States," formed at Utrecht in 1579, Miss Lucy Salmon, who is present

with her friend Miss Start, of Vassar, has ably written. The author of "Brave Little Holland," here for the fifth time on the soil, remembers that his Alma Mater, Rutgers College, in New Jersey, began lite largely under the auspices of Livingston, the ScottishAmerican pastor in the Reformed Dutch Church and graduate of Utrecht University. In the western world, in 1770, he enlarged the ancestral prayer, "Sol justitiæ illustra nos," adding, "et occidentam." The prayer and college motto are timely-Sun of justice, illuminate also the west.

Six bright and lively Japanese are here also. Intense earnestness and alertness to grasp the principles of the history and law of Christendom characterize these progressive gentlemen. One is a son of a victorious admiral, one is sent by the Tokio Government, one is secretary of the Legation at the Hague, and two will read papers, one in French, the other in English.

The Russians send handsome, rosy-faced men in faultless tailoring, speaking remark. ably clear French. I have been told that every German university is represented. The English professor, Oscar Browning, writer of many books, "stocky," hail-fellow, learned, and fluent, fi.ls the chair as Vice-Président finely, and talks German easily. What a delightful fellow an Englishman is when he has a touch of bohemianism in his composition! One of the most impressive of men, a many-sided scholar, is Frederic Harrison, of London, who is literally raising in bronze at Paris the statue of his teacher, Auguste Comte. Who can excel this master of research, of spoken French and of luminous English, in writing biography, like that of his Cromwell, or William the Silent? He, more than any other, is making accessible the diplomatic history of mighty England during a thousand years past.

Our space for bids detailed praise or prophecy of this international gathering. It is set not only for the defense of truth, but for its gathering and storage in print. If historical truth is as important as religious truth (and who doubts it?), surely this Congress must do great goo now and hereafter.

The Hague.