ng it and making it a safe place of human habitation. All the
evidence obtainable in Santiago was to the effect that these houses
were not infected with yellow fever; but even if they had been, it was
quite possible, I think, to save them and make them useful. If, when the
army landed, the best of the buildings had been thoroughly cleaned and
then fumigated by shutting them up tightly and burning sulphur and other
suitable chemical substances in them, the disease-germs that they
contained might have been destroyed. Convict barges saturated with the
germs of smallpox, typhus, dysentery, and all sorts of infectious and
contagious diseases are treated in this way in Siberia, and there is no
reason why houses should not be so purified in Cuba. General Miles and
his chief surgeon decided, however, that the whole village should be
burned, and burned it was. The postal, telegraph, and signal-service
officers were turned out of their quarters and put into tents; a
yellow-fever camp was established in the hills about two miles north of
Siboney; more hospital tents and tent-flies were pitched along the
sea-coast west of the notch; and as fast as sick and wounded soldiers
could be removed from the condemned houses and put under canvas or sent
to the yellow-fever camp, the houses were destroyed.

In view of the fact that yellow fever had made its appearance in the
army before Santiago as well as at Siboney, Miss Barton, acting under
the advice and direction of Major Wood, chief surgeon of the First
Division hospital, abandoned the Red Cross station at the front, brought
all its equipment and supplies back to the sea-coast, and put them again
on board the _State of Texas_. She also decided not to allow
fever-stricken employees of the Red Cross to be cared for on board the
steamer, and Dr. and Mrs. Lesser and two nurses were therefore carried
on their cots to a railroad-train and transported to the yellow-fever
camp two miles away. I went through the fever hospital where they lay
just before they were removed, and made up my mind--very ignorantly and
presumptuously, perhaps--that neither they nor any of the patients whom
I saw had yellow fever, either in a mild form or in any form whatever.
They seemed to me to have nothing more than calenture, brought on by
overwork, a malarious atmosphere, and a bad sanitary environment. Mrs.
White, who was also said to have yellow fever, recovered in three days,
just in time to escape being sent to