"A finer looking set of young men I never saw; they made not a single complaint, not a murmur, against their sentence, and decency should have been shown their dead bodies in admiration for the heroism they displayed when brought out for execution. Not a muscle was seen to move, and they proved to the miserable rabble congregated to witness the horrible spectacle that it being the fortunes of war that they fell into the power of this government, they were not afraid to die. It would have been a great consolation to these poor fellows, as they repeatedly asked, to see their consul, and through him to have sent their last adieus, and such little remembrances as they had, to their beloved relations in the States. But Mr. Owens, the American Consul, did not even make application to the Captain-General to see these unfortunate countrymen in their distress, and their sacred wishes in their last moments have been unattended to. Lastly, at the very hour of triumph, when the people of the Spanish steamer _Habanero_ knew that the execution of the American prisoners, whom they had taken to Havana, had taken place, two shots were fired across or at the steamer _Falcon_ off Bahia Honda; and notwithstanding that this vessel was well known to them, having as she had the American flag hoisted, etc., she was detained and overhauled by these Spanish officers."
Another reliable source, the report of an American naval officer, furnished the information, that after the prisoners had been shot, their bodies were mutilated; they were dragged by the heels, and outraged in a manner which would make the most unenlightened savage shudder; their ears and fingers were cut off, and portions of these, together with pieces of skull, were distributed to the Spanish officers as souvenirs, while some of these grim relics were afterward nailed up in public places as a warning against attempts to revolt against the Spanish Government. Ten of the bodies were placed in coffins, and the rest were merely thrown into a pit.
When Captain Kelly and his forty followers had been separated from Crittenden, they managed in some manner--the details of which have not come down to us--to evade the Spaniards and to escape with such supplies as they could carry. They took to the cover of the woods, and being unfamiliar with the country wandered around, until they fell in with a loyal negro who undertook to act as guide for them. He led them to a dense wood, in sight of Las Pozas, and they sent him on ahead to report conditions. He returned, stating that Lopez was in possession of the town, and so they joined him, just as he was about to lead his men into the mountains. Captain Kelly's men had been so engrossed with their own predicament that they had remained in ignorance of the fate of Crittenden's force, and they were therefore unable to give Lopez any definite information concerning them, and he treasured the hope that they too had escaped the Spaniards, and would be able to join him at Pinar del Rio, in accordance with the original plan.