The policy that General Linares should have adopted was the Fabian policy of obstruction, harassment, and delay. Every hour that he could detain General Shafter's advancing army on the Siboney road increased his own chances of success and lessened those of his adversary; because the army of defense, already acclimated, could stand exposure to sun, rain, and miasma much better than the army of invasion could. Besides that, a column of five thousand regulars from Manzanillo was hurrying to his assistance, and it was of the utmost importance that these reinforcements should reach him before he should be forced into a decisive battle. Instead of resisting General Shafter's advance, however, with obstinate pertinacity on the Siboney road, he abandoned his strong position at Guasimas, after a single sharp but inconclusive engagement, and retreated almost to Santiago without striking another blow. As I have already said with regard to the unopposed landing at Daiquiri and Siboney, it was great luck for General Shafter, but it was not war.
We passed the battle-field of Guasimas about noon, without stopping to examine it, and pushed on toward Sevilla with a straggling, disorderly column of soldiers belonging to the Second and Twenty-first Infantry, who were following a battery of light artillery to the front. The men seemed to be suffering intensely from the heat, and every few hundred yards we would find one of them lying unconscious in the bushes by the roadside, where he had been carried by his comrades after he had fainted and fallen under the fierce, scorching rays of the tropical sun. In one place, where the road was narrow and sunken, we met a pack-train of mules returning from the front. Frightened at something, just before they reached the artillery, they suddenly broke into a wild stampede, and as they could not escape on either side, owing to the height of the banks and the denseness of the undergrowth, they jumped in among the guns and caissons and floundered about until the whole battery was involved in an almost inextricable tangle, which blocked the road for more than an hour. I tried to get around the jam of mules, horses, and cannon by climbing the bank and forcing my way through the jungle; but I was so torn by thorns and pricked by the sharp spines of the Spanish bayonet that I soon gave up the attempt, and, returning to the road, sat down, in the shadiest place I could find, to rest, take a drink from my canteen, and await developments. If General Linares, when he retreated, had left behind a squad or two of sharp-shooters and bushwhackers to harass our advance at narrow and difficult places in the road, what a chance they would have had when the pack-mules jumped into that battery! With the help given by a detachment of engineers, who were working on the road a short distance ahead, the mules were finally extricated, and the procession moved on.