Every failure or defeat that he has met with he attributes to the want of soldiers. He declares that he had not enough men under his control properly to garrison Holguin or Victoria de las Tunas, and it was for this reason that they fell.
He has to say something in his own defence, but it is doubtful if many people will be deceived by this wonderful report.
Spain has asked for an explanation of the Silver Heels affair.
Minister de Lôme has called the attention of the State Department to the case, and asked why the officers on the revenue cutter allowed the vessel to escape them.
The collector of the port of New York has been asked to give his version of the matter. He says that in allowing the ship to get under way before he attempted to arrest her, he was acting in accordance with the wishes of the Spanish Government agent in New York, who wished to have a clear case of filibustering against the ship. It is not against the law to carry arms, and if the Silver Heels had been stopped with only a cargo of ammunition on board, it might have been difficult to prove that she was not engaged in a lawful mercantile expedition. But, had she been seized with arms, ammunition, and a number of men on board, it would have been impossible to deny the nature of her business.
If the collector of the port can prove the truth of his statement, Spain can find no just cause of complaint against us, the revenue cutter did all that was required of her by lying in the course the Silver Heels was expected to take—that the vessel went another way was nobody's fault.
The Madrid papers think it a great pity that this affair should have occurred at a moment when Spain was trying to show her friendship for us, and declare that the officers on the revenue cutter appeared to be doing their best to avoid overtaking the ship. In Washington it is said that grave trouble may arise out of the matter.
Following right after these statements comes another from the agent of the Silver Heels.
This gentleman declares that the vessel never brought up alongside of the dock at which she is accused of having taken on her cargo. He says she was laden with coal, which she took on board at a pier on the New Jersey shore, either Hoboken or Weehawken, that she sailed down the bay and out at the Narrows under her own canvas, and never employed any tugboat. The agent states positively that the Silver Heels did not go up the Sound, and declares that if a mysterious vessel did take on a cargo and slip up the Sound, it was not the Silver Heels.