After wandering about for half an hour in the two lower stories, I climbed a crooked flight of stone steps, half blocked up with debris from a shattered parapet above, and came out on the flat roof of the highest and largest of the three cubes that together make up the fortress. It was a spacious battlemented floor, of rectangular but irregular outline, having an extreme length of perhaps one hundred and fifty feet, with an average width of seventy-five to one hundred.[7] On its eastern side it overlooked a deep, wide moat, intended to protect the wall from an assault made along the crest of the promontory, while on the other three sides one might look down hundreds of feet to the wide blue plain of the ocean, the narrow mouth of the harbor, and the deep sheltered cove of the Estrella battery. The city of Santiago was hidden behind the flat-topped hill on which the signal-station stands; but I could see a part of the beautiful bay, with the bare green mountains behind it, while eastward and westward I could follow the surf-whitened coast-line to the distant blue capes formed by the forest-clad slopes of Turquino on one side and the billowy foot-hills of the Gran Piedra on the other. The fleet of Admiral Sampson had disappeared; but its place had already been taken by a little fleet of fishing-smacks from Santiago, whose sun-illumined sails looked no larger, on the dark-blue expanse of the Caribbean, than the wings of white Cuban butterflies that had fallen into the sea.

For ten minutes after I reached the aërial platform of the bastion roof I had no eyes for anything except the magnificent natural cyclorama of blue water, rolling foot-hills, deep secluded valleys, and palm-fringed mountains that surrounded me; but, withdrawing my gaze reluctantly at last from the enchanting scenery, I turned my attention again to the castle and its armament. Scattered about here and there on the flat roof of the bastion were five short bronze mortars of various calibers and two muzzle-loading smooth-bore cannon, mounted, like field-pieces, on clumsy wooden carriages with long "trails" and big, heavy wheels. It was evident at a glance that neither of the cannon would be likely to hit a battle-ship at a distance of five hundred yards without a special interposition of Providence; and as the mortars had no elevating, training, or sighting gear, and could be discharged only at a certain fixed angle, it is doubtful whether they could drop a shell upon a floating target a mile in diameter—and yet these five mortars and two eighteen-pounder muzzle-loading guns were all the armament that Morro Castle had.

After looking the pieces over superficially and forming from mere inspection a judgment as to their value, I proceeded to examine them closely for dates. The larger of the two cannon, which was trained over the northern parapet as if to bombard the city of Santiago, bore the following inscription:

MARS
PLURIBUS NEC IMPAR[8]
12 Jun 1748
PAR JEAN MARITZ
ULTIMO RATIO REGUM[9]
LOUIS CHARLES DE BOURBON
COMPTE D'EU
DUC D'AUMALE

The other cannon, which was trained over the western parapet and aimed at the place where Socapa Castle ought to have been, was inscribed:

LE COMPTE DE PROVENCE
ULTIMO RATIO REGUM
LOUIS CHARLES DE BOURBON
COMPTE D'EU
DUC D'AUMALE
1755

The mortars, which were embellished with Gorgons' heads and were fine specimens of bronze casting, bore inscriptions or dates as follows:

No. 1. EL MANTICORA
1733
STRVXITDVCTOREXERC
ITM REGISBENqVE (sic)
—————
PHIL II HISPAN REX[10]
ELISA FAR HIS REGINA
No. 2. VOĨE ABET FECIT
SEVILLE AÑO D
1724
No. 3. EL COMETA
1737
No. 4. 1780
No. 5. 1781

From the above inscriptions and dates it appears that the most modern piece of ordnance in the Morro Castle battery was cast one hundred and seventeen years ago, and the oldest one hundred and seventy-four years ago. It would be interesting to know the history of the two French cannon which, in obedience to the order of Louis XIV, were marked "ULTIMO RATIO REGUM." Iean Maritz, their founder, doubtless regarded them, a century ago, with as much pride as Herr Krupp feels now when he turns out a fifteen-inch steel breech-loader at Essen; but the ultimo ratio regum does not carry as much weight on this side of the Atlantic in the nineteenth century as it carried on the other side in the eighteenth, and the recent discussions between Morro Castle and Admiral Sampson's fleet proved conclusively that the "last argument of kings" is much less cogent and convincing than the first argument of battle-ships. It is doubtful, however, whether these antiquated guns were ever fired at Admiral Sampson's fleet. They were not pointed toward the sea when the castle was evacuated; I could not find any ammunition for them, either on the bastion roof where they stood or in the vaults of the castle below; there were no rammers or spongers on or about the gun-platforms, where they would naturally have been left when the guns were abandoned; and there was nothing whatever to show that they had been fired in fifty years. But it could have made little difference to the blockading fleet whether they were fired or not. They were hardly more formidable than the "crakys of war" used by Edward III against the French at the battle of Crécy. As for the mortars, they were fit only for a museum of antiquities, or a collection of obsolete implements of war like that in the Tower of London. I hope that Secretary Alger or Secretary Long will have "El Manticora" and "El Cometa" brought to the United States and placed at the main entrance of the War Department or the Navy Department as curiosities, as fine specimens of artistic bronze casting, and as trophies of the Santiago campaign.

When I had finished copying the inscriptions on the cannon and the mortars, I went down into the interior of the castle to examine some pictures and inscriptions that I had noticed on the walls of a chamber in the second story, which had been used, apparently, as a guard-room or barrack. It was a large, rectangular, windowless apartment, with a wide door, a vaulted ceiling, and smooth stone walls which had been covered with plaster and whitewashed. Among the Spanish soldiers who had occupied this room there was evidently an amateur artist of no mean ability, who had amused himself in his hours of leisure by drawing pictures and caricatures on the whitewashed walls. On the left of the door, at a height of five or six feet, was a life-sized and very cleverly executed sketch of a Spaniard in a wide sombrero, reading a Havana newspaper. His 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 ! ! !")