Crossing the bridge of Spain to the walled city and turning to the right there are well-paved streets bordered with strips of park beside the river, that is rushing the same way if you are going to headquarters; and the object that tells where to turn off to find the old gateway through the wall, with a drawbridge over the grassy moat, is a Monument to Alphonse, whose memory it is the habit of these people to celebrate.  Approaching the city hall (headquarters) there is a white-walled hospital to note; then comes a heavy mass of buildings on a narrow street, and the small square already styled in this article a park, and we arrive at the grand entrance of the official edifice.  The room devoted to ceremony is so spacious that one must consent that magnitude is akin to grandeur.  There is the usual double stairway and a few stone steps to overcome.  On the right and left under the second lift of stairs were corded the Spanish Mausers and Remingtons and many boxes of cartridges.  I have several times noticed soldiers tramping on loose cartridges as though they had no objection at all to an explosion.  You can tell the Mauser ammunition, because the cartridges are in clips of five, and the little bullets famous for their long flight are covered with nickel.  The Remington bullets are bigger and coated with brass.  Something has been said to the effect that the Remington balls used by the Spaniards are poisonous and that it is uncivilized to manufacture them.  The object of the Mauser and Remington system in covering the bullets, the one with nickel and the other with brass, is not to poison, but to prevent the lead from fouling the rifles.  The point is almost reached in modern guns of 2,000 and 3,000 yards range where the friction of the gun barrel and the speed of the missile at the muzzle are sufficient to fuse unprotected lead, and at any rate so much of the soft material would soon he left in the grooves as to impair accuracy and endanger the structure of the arm.

Right ahead when the first stairs are cleared is a splendid hall, with a pair of gilded lions on a dais, and some of the boys had adorned these beasts with crowns of theatrical splendor.  The arms of Spain are conspicuous, and in superb medallions illustrious warriors, statesmen, authors, artists and navigators, look down from the walls upon desks now occupied by American officers.  Above this floor the stairs are blocks of hardwood, the full width of the stairway and the height of the step, and this earthquake precaution does not detract from the dignity of the building, for the woodwork is massive and handsome.  A marvelous effect might be produced in some of the marble palaces of private citizens in our American cities by the construction of stairways with the iron-hard and marble-brilliant wood that is abundant in Puerto Rico, Cuba and Luzon.  The hall in which the city council met, now the place of the provost-marshal’s court, is furnished in a style that puts to shame the frugality displayed in the council chambers of our expensively governed American cities, where men of power pose as municipal economists.