4,500 men were landed in one hour, and the whole force was landed in six hours, without accident or confusion.  In the prosecution of that unholy war, which lasted about a year, nearly three thousand men were lost in battle and about as many more by disease, peace being finally made by the cession of territory on the part of Mexico, the United States paying in return much more than the territory was worth.  The twenty millions paid to Texas probably in great part went into the coffers of the patriots who occupied that region, some of whom had not been known as desirable citizens in the parts from which they came, and had manifested their patriotism by leaving their country for their country’s good.  The fifteen millions handed over to Mexico looks like a contribution to a conscience fund, and an atonement offered for an assault without provocation.  The country gained Arizona, New Mexico, California and finally Texas, but it lost six thousand good men, the cost of the war, and all told, in negotiations, about thirty million dollars, besides.  However, it is not always profitable to look up the harvests of war.  There are always two—­the harvest of gain, and the harvest of loss.  Death and debt are reapers, as well as are honor and extent of territory.

The feelings of the six thousand American troops who landed on Cuban soil on June 22nd, 1898, may well be imagined.  Although they felt the effects of the confinement to which they had been subjected while on shipboard, there was very little sickness among them.  Again possessed of the free use of their limbs they swarmed the beach and open space near the landing, making themselves at home, and confronting the difficulties and perils that lay before them with a courage born of national pride.  Before them were the mountains with their almost impassable roads, the jungles filled with poisonous plants and the terrible prickly underbrush and pointed grass, in which skulked the land crab and various reptiles whose bite or sting was dangerous; twenty miles of this inhospitable country lay between them and Santiago, their true objective.  And somewhere on the road to that city they knew they were destined to meet a well-trained foe, skilled in all the arts of modern warfare, who would contest their advance.  The prospect, however, did not unnerve them, although they could well conjecture that all who landed would not re-embark.  Some in that six thousand were destined never again to set foot on shipboard.  Out of the Twenty-fifth Infantry and the Tenth Cavalry men were to fall both before Spanish bullets and disease ere these organizations should assemble to return to their native shores.  These thoughts did not prevent the men from taking advantage of what nature had to offer them.