This is in English, and reads as follows:
"Captured at Santiago De Cuba, July 17, 1898, by the Fifth Army
Corps, U.S. Army, Commanded by Major General William R. Shafter, and
presented by him to the City of San Francisco, California, in trust
for the Native Sons of the Golden West, and accepted as a token of the
valor and patriotism of the Army of the United States."
While I was reading the inscriptions and making measurements an open
two-seated carriage was driven up to the curbstone, about four o'clock
in the afternoon. From this a gentleman in a business suit, about
sixty years of age, alighted and approached me. He was a man of
pleasing address. He said to me, "You seem to be interested in this
cannon." "I am," was the reply. Then he began to pace it and to
examine it, and said, "It is just twelve feet long." He thought that
possibly it came into the hands of the Spaniards during the Napoleonic
wars, and that it at length found its way over to Cuba to help
in enslaving the people of that island. As I was attracted to
my informant, I ventured to ask him whom I had the pleasure of
addressing.
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