June 24. The Spanish Cortes suspended by royal decree. The Chamber of Deputies adjourned without the customary cheers for the throne.
Major-General Lawton advancing on Santiago.[27]
Action near Juragua.[28]
June 25. Skirmish near Sevilla.
The American government protested a draft drawn by its consul at St. Thomas, D. W. I., under circumstances calculated to make an extremely dangerous precedent. The draft was made by Consul Van Horne for the purchase of twenty-seven hundred tons of coal, which arrived in St. Thomas in the Ardenrose about the twenty-eighth of May. The consul bought it for ten dollars a ton when the Spanish consul had offered twenty dollars a ton for it. Van Horne apparently did the proper thing and did not exceed instructions.
June 26. General Garcia with three thousand [pg 185]Cuban insurgents landed at Juragua by American transports.[29]
The troops comprising the third expedition to Manila embarked at San Francisco.
The sloop Isabel arrived at Key West flying the Cuban flag. On her were Capt. Rafael Mora, Lieut. Felix de los Rios and four others of the Cuban army, carrying sealed dispatches from the Cuban government to Señor T. Estrada Palma, of the New York junta.
The U. S. dynamite cruiser Vesuvius shelled the fortifications at the entrance to Santiago harbour.[30]
The water-supply of Santiago cut off by the American forces.[31]