When the order came from General Shafter that this must be accomplished in a few hours, the English Consul informed me that he and other foreign consuls went to the camp of General Miles and begged for more time, which was granted. There were no means of transport by which the weak and old could be conveyed with any degree of decency, and the horrors of this terrible march can never be told in language adequate for the situation. Delicate women, tender children and grandmothers, bred in the ease and luxury peculiar to this luxury-loving nation, were herded together like cattle and passed out of their homes without being able to make any suitable preparation. Down the dusty road swept the sad cavalcade, looking the agonized farewells they could not speak, and plodded wearily on to Caney. Arriving there, a few palm huts were their only shelter.

Miss Barton's
Good Work.

Here

There were so many to be provided for, that at night they could only be laid on the ground with their feet to the centre like the spokes of a wheel, and thus crowded closely together, mothers could not turn even to minister to their crying children. came in the glorious work of Miss Barton and her staff. Of their able and efficient services in imparting speedy relief to these sufferers at Caney enough cannot be said. Here, too, came in the unselfish sacrifices of our noble soldiers, who gave to these poor exiles of their own half rations and scanty clothing after being in the trenches for days without food This makes a record of individual generosity unparalleled in any This was repeated to me again and again by Spanish soldiers, and many other stories of the kindness and magnanimity of our men made my cheek flush with pride and patriotic fervor as I listened.

or water. war.

Many isolated cases of self-sacrifice kept coming to the surface, and many more will never be known till the Recording Angel makes them known at the last great summing up of heroic deeds. Among the former is one which I wish to put on record here. Mr. Bangs, one of Miss Barton's staff, was as truly a soldier as though he had met his death on the field of battle. When I met him he had passed through the horrors of Siboney and Caney, and the stamp of death was on his face.

General Toral has been said to have ordered the looting of Santiago before its evacuation, but this, I wish in justice to state, is a gross misrepresentation. The rabble who did the looting was the class usually following in the wake of any army, made up of almost every nationality under the sun. They do their work under no orders, but are a law unto themselves, like the carrion birds that hover over the battlefield.

Among our troops there was a natural desire for trophies and mementoes of the war in which they had shared. I saw our young soldiers buying

up jeweled rosaries, and known of officers buying decorations taken from the dead, all of which was perfectly legitimate.

I found the military hospitals in Santiago very poorly equipped. There were no cots and a very meagre supply of canned fruits, so necessary for convalescents and very few medicines could be found. Miss Barton made up for the deficiency as well as she could.

One hospital was established in a theatre, another in

Hospitals Poorly
Equipped.

a large building next door. The patients here were on the floor, with blankets over them. Another, in which I acted as nurse, was in the Nautical Club, which is built out into the bay, and therefore comparatively cool and comfortable. The first day I was in this hospital we bathed every patient and changed the clothing, Miss Barton supplying all needed changes. She supplied the deficiency here as elsewhere, being called upon generally for medical supplies. This is no reflection on our Government, as, up to the time of capitulation, everything had to be landed at Siboney by lighters, and, as I understand, that eleven had been lost at sea, and the sea ran so that it was almost impossible to supply maintenance for our army. Where the supplies could be landed at Santiago the needs of the army were so great, it would have required a miracle almost equal to the ancient one of the loaves and fishes to have supplied all.

The natives have a lot of domestic remedies, and the secrets of their most peculiar pharmacopoeia are thus far unknown to us. They have a large green bean that has four black seeds. This plant is first cousin to that one yielding croton oil. The native considers half a bean a dose, but in certain cases they take a whole bean, with tremendous results. I cannot describe these further than to say that unless the medicine all but ties them up in a double knot they are not satisfied and consider they are not well treated. Hence, our physicians find it difficult to treat them outside of their own remedies.

Prior to the surrender, the streets were unfit to walk in, and when the surrounding country had emptied itself of its sickly, emaciated inhabitants, and they were concentrated in the city proper, in order that they might be fed-in addition to the remaining Spanish army and General Shafter's troops the chances for disease were greatly multiplied.

The streets and passageways, reeking with filthy odors, and uncleanliness on every hand, furnish ample material for fevers and diseases growing out of such conditions. Some sanitary measures should at once be established to obviate the pestilential conditions.

WR

HOSPITAL CONDITIONS AT PONCE.

HEN the fever came to Ponce and the surrounding territory, the hospital service proved entirely inadequate to cope with the ever increasing number of cases. The administration seemed unable to keep up with the demand, and the conditions for some days were of the most miserable description. What hospitals there were quickly became overcrowded, and then men, burning with fever, were allowed to lie out in the grass, having only one woolen blanket for a covering. The damp grass, saturated with the heavy rains of the tropical wet season, was the most impossible place for the sick. The death-rate slowly rose, but the heads of the medical department kept claiming that everything was all right and that the sickness did not amount to very much. Medical supplies were either very scarce or the conduct of the hospitals very poor, because I know of cases where no medicine or food was given for over twenty-four hours at a stretch. The natural robustness of the American soldier, however, helped the majority to survive in spite of the lack of care. And yet the survival was but a sorry one. Shattered by the ravages of the fever, weak in body and mind from the lack of nourishment and proper attention, lying in a climate that proved to have absolutely no recuperative properties for unacclimated people, these men dropped day after day. Those who in the beginning had been great, splendid specimens of the best of our American youth, who had been good to look upon in the fulness of their health and robustness, were now but pitiable wrecks, scarcely able to raise trembling hands to their wan faces. The one cry, weak and wailing as it came to me day after day, was to send them home. Finally came the good news that a ship was to carry convalescents back to the States. At once came a wonderful brightening of faces, a stiffening up of limp forms, as the poor devils crawled about the hospital cantonments.

The Last Ray of
Hope Expires.

The great day arrived when the convalescents were to be taken away, and then came the announcement that only those who could walk and who were well on the road to recovery could go aboard ship. The poor fellows whom the fever had left so weak that they could not raise their emaciated frames from the cots, where they were so fortunate as to occupy such an article, rolled over and buried their faces in their arms, heart-broken. Hope had fled and fever came back. The others who were able to walk, and who were selected to be sent home, tried to tread with old-time buoyant step, but which ended in a weak

shamble. Down to the beach they were carted in ambulances, army wagons and any kind of conveyances that could be gathered.

Large lighters rose and fell in the gentle surf, willing hands helped the poor fellows scramble aboard, and puffy little steam launches towed them out to the transports. And then came another setback. Many of the invalids had exhausted their poor little strength in the flitting from hospital to shore, and when alongside the big ship, which breathed of fresh ocean breezes and of home, they were lying upon the bottom of the boats unable to rise. A lynx-eyed surgeon scanned every one, and then gave forth the prder that those unable to walk on board must go back, as the transports were only for convalescents, who could care for themselves, there being no hospital facilities on board for sick men. No more pitiful sight could be magined when those poor devils were turned away from what, to them, meant life. Dejection of the deepest type followed. The puffy little launches towed them back to the shore, and the three volleys in the graveyards became more frequent.

YELLOW FEVER AMONG THE AMERICAN SOLDIERS IN CUBA.

'S IT grip?"

BY REV. DR. HENRY C. McCook.

14.
"No, senor," said the Cuban doctor, shrugging his shoulders.
Then he smiled and looked thoughtful, and shook his head. "Eet iss
calenturua. Eet iss malarial fever.

Eet iss--"
Eetiss—1

"It's the devil's own disease !" broke in the major, with an emphasis that showed how personal and profound was the experience from which he spoke. By whatever name doctors call it, when folk have it they are apt to adopt the major's diagnosis with various descriptive addenda, which it would be impolite to put into print. As to details, take this invoice:

Item-A headache, getting harder and heavier, until the head longs for a pillow on the block of "the maiden" in the grass market of Edinburgh, or in the basket of a Parisian guillotine. Do you know what a "sluting" headache is? That's it!

Item-A fever, growing hot, hotter, hottest! Does the water on your brow relieve it? Yes, until it begins to boil!

Item-Sore bones, sorer bones, break bones! Yon Tennessee hospital steward says he "reckons it is a kyind of break-bone fever, anyhow."

And he is not now vending a fairy story, like the one he signed when he declared himself a yellow fever immune in order to be sent to Santiago.

"Well, ye-es," he confessed, "I did prevairycate, I allow. But anything was kyind of axcusable to git out of Camp Alger!"

Item-Nausea. And more nausea. And-O-oh! "Seems kyndeh like old times on the 'Resolute' off Cape Hatteras," remarks the hospital steward. But he speaks from his own experience, for the present nauseated victim is not subject to sea sickness.

Item-Chills; growing chillier; ch-ch-chatter; chat-chat-ter-rr-rr-oh! Did the head burst? No! If it only would, and be done with it! "Pull up the blanket, steward, I'm freezing. No! throw it off. I'm burning up. My back! my bones! my head!"

Item-Weak, weaker, weakest of all weak things in this wide worlċ. How can a strong man wilt into this utter worthlessness within three days? Calentura, hey? No wonder Shafter's victorious army withered before it, and had to be returned home to recuperate. Did you ever doubt the story of the Assyrian army that came down upon ancient Sennacherib "like a wolf on the fold, and his cohorts were gleaming with purple and gold," but was blighted in one night? If the angels of the Lord then and there breathed forth calentura, the deed would have been done. I shall persist in calling it grip, a horrible Cuban species. At all events, it is mean enough a monster of morbidity to bear that generic name. From calentura, grip and yellow fever, "Good Lord deliver us!"

Next to the Cathedral, the most prominent building in Santiago is the hospital. It occupies the crest of the hill on which the city stands, and

The House of Suffering.

from the harbor its red cross flag seems to wave in the midst of a tropical garden. Let us climb the height from the little square (placeta) and Church of Dolores. Take this winding path and bear away through masses of shrubbery, festooned with spider webs, to this long steep stairway, the southern approach. Stand now at the landing and view the scene. You will have little heart for it when you come out. Over the mass of wrinkled roof-tops of red tiles, that seem almost to touch one another, so narrow are the streets, you see the bay, or that part which forms the harbor. The remainder is hidden by the fold in the mountains. Ships lie at anchor, among them the "Mexico," with General Shafter on board en route for home in the wake of his triumphant army. Only the sick and convalescent remnants of the army of Santiago now remain, they and the Silent Battalion of the Fallen.

The little tug "Esmeralda" snorts at the dock waiting to take off Colonel McClernand, Major Groesback, the able judge advocate and others of the