SOME CHAPTERS OF HISTORY. 
127 
recovered from the wreck. The authorities of Havana conducted the 
funeral as a token of public sympathy, the Bishop of Havana officiating. 
The bodies lay in state in the Governor’s Palace. The funeral cortege was 
with one exception the most imposing ever seen in the city. The burial 
was in a plot of ground in Colon Cemetery given to the United States; 
subsequently the dead were removed to the National Cemetery at. Arling¬ 
ton, in Virginia, opposite Washington. 
In his report to the Secretary of the Navy, sent on the night of the 
explosion, Captain Sigsbee wrote: “Public opinion should be suspended 
until further report.” With what restraint the American people bore 
themselves is a matter of history; but the destruction of the Maine is 
fitly described by Captain Sigsbee as “the ultimate incident which com¬ 
pelled the people of the United States to regard Spain as an impossible 
neighbor.” While the intervention of the United States in Cuba was not 
prompted by motives of revenge, it is nevertheless true that the motto, 
“Remember the Maine,” tersely expressed the popular feeling which pre¬ 
vailed throughout the country. 
The Maine sank in six fathoms of water, and gradually settled in the 
mud until little of the frame remained above the surface. The wreck has 
long been an obstruction to navigation demanding removal; and a grow¬ 
ing sentiment in the United States, that the wreck should be raised and 
the dead who sank with it should be recovered and given burial at Arling¬ 
ton, led to action by Congress in 1910 providing that this should be done. 
The wreck was removed in 1912, the hulk sunk five miles out at sea. 
There ate several other sunken wrecks in the harbor. The American 
Government removed the wreck of the warship Alocha which had been 
burned and sunk in 1816, and had been an obstruction ever since. There 
were found in her thirty-four iron and brass cannon and tons of cannon 
balls. 
VII.—The Government of Intervention. 
American warships blockaded the harbor during the continuance of 
the Spanish-American War. In December, 1898, the Americans en¬ 
tered Havana, and the 17,000 troops of the Spanish garrison evacuated 
the city. On Sunday, January 1, 1899, Gen. Castellanos, the 136th and 
last of the Spanish Governors of Cuba, made formal surrender of 
Spanish sovereignty. The Americans found the city in an indescribable 
condition of filthiness, undertook the heroic task of cleansing these 
Augean stables, and before they relinquished Havana to the Cubans, 
on May 21, 1902, had made it one of the cleanest of cities, f* The 
Government of Intervention paved the streets, remodeled the parks 
and boulevards, rebuilt the docks, constructed the Malecon, converted 
