Army and Navy Review 1915 Panama-California Edition - Balboa Park

Six days of southing, and the misty shore faintly discernable on the
port hand, rose into the rocky head-land that guarded the entrance to the
harbor of Acapulco. Here in the days of Andalusia’s glory came the Manila
galleons, bearing the annual tribute from the isles, which the genius and
daring of Magellan had given his adopted country at the cost of his life,
the figure of their saintly patron before them on their prows, and the terrifying
vision of Drake and Anson left far behind. Now the place that
once was a treasure-house of gold, and one of the world’s busy marts,
sleeps on through the un-ending years, and in its harbor, the lordly galleon
with its swelling sails, and bristling guns has given place to the humble
fishing-smack, and Indian cayuga.
Dominating the little Spanish city, dreaming at the foot of towering
mountains, and looking forth with faded majesty on the shimmering
waters of the nearly land-locked bay stands old Fort San Diego. A distressing
poverty of names hampered the conquistadores in designating
their abiding places beyond the western seas, and the ecclesiastical nomenclature
to which they confined themselves makes the geography of the
lands they won for Castile, by the grace of God and their own good swords,
resemble an oft reiterated litany of the saints. Above the crumbling battlements
of the mossgrown old stronghold, a huge Mexican ensign waved
in barbaric splendor, and as the South Dakota anchored half a kilometer
from the foot of the glacis, the soldiers and sailors who thronged her decks,
witnessed a scene which would have warmed the heart of Don Quixote could
that last scion of chivalry have opened his long closed eyes, and looked
forth upon the world he sought to bring back to the days when knighthood
was in flower. An ancient cannon which might appropriately have graced
one of our city parks, as a relic of the Revolution, or of some anterior conflict,
was solemnly hauled forth to an embrasure, deliberately shotted before
our wondering eyes, and this bold defiance was followed shortly by a
grandiloquent message from the heroic commandante, borne by the British
consul— our own had betaken himself to some more favored spot, where
the wicked cease from troubling, and war clouds gather not—acquainting
us with the tidings that no pusillanimous thought of surrender polluted the
hearts of the devoted garrison, and that to the last man they stood ready
to welcome the dastard invader with bloody swords to hospitable graves.
A disposition of the naval and military forces was arranged to be
made, should orders to occupy the city be received, which was quite as
picturesque as the setting in which it was to be staged, and had the plan
been carried out it would have added another romantic page to the history
of the Marine Corps. The strange enterprises in which this Corps had been
engaged in the remote parts of the earth and far places thereof— the capture
of the Bedouin stronghold of Derne in the Tripolitan desert, the storming
of the gates of Chapultepec, and the defense and relief of the legations
at the siege of Peking— read like a chronicle of Froissart, and belong to
medieval days rather than to our own time. But the patron saint of Acapulco
watched lovingly over his charge, and the song of battle was changed
to the psalm of watchful waiting in the land of the foe, and the hand of
the invader was stayed at their gates.
And weeks of dreary inaction followed; lightened somewhat by successful
fishing expeditions, and decidedly unsuccessful attempts at amateur
theatricals. But at last came orders, not such as were hoped for, but,
at least, holding forth promise of change, and the cruiser-transport squared
away for the northward, carrying with her many who felt a tinge of regret
that the stars and stripes had not displaced the eagle floating defiantly on