ashed into his mind,
and was reflected in his thin, eager, street-Arab face. Taking out of
his pocket two bits of dirty string, he tied his loose cotton trousers
tightly around his ankles, and then, unbuttoning his waist-band, he
began scooping up the corn-meal from the filthy planks and shoveling it
into his baggy breeches. Five minutes later he waddled off the pier in
triumph, looking, so far as his legs were concerned, like a big, badly
stuffed sawdust doll, or a half-starved gamin suffering from
elephantiasis.

As the day advanced, the number of men and children who crowded about
the steamer watching for opportunities to pilfer or pick up food became
so great that it was necessary to clear the pier and put a guard of
soldiers there to exclude the public altogether. Then the hungry people
formed in a dense mass in the street opposite the steamer, and stood
there in the blazing sunshine for hours, watching the little flat-cars
loaded with provisions as they were rolled past to the warehouse. From
an English cable-operator, who came down to the pier, we learned that
for weeks there had been nothing in the city to eat except rice, and
that the supply even of that was limited. Hard-bread crackers had sold
as high as one dollar apiece and canned meat at four dollars a can, and
many well-to-do families had not tasted bread, meat, or milk in more
than a month.

Although there was said to be little or no yellow fever in Santiago, the
captain of the _State of Texas_ decided to quarantine the steamer
against the shore, and gave notice to all on board that if any person
left the ship he could not return to it. This made going ashore a
serious matter, because there was virtually nothing to eat in the city,
and no place for a stranger to stay, and if one cut loose from the
steamer he might find himself without shelter and without any means
whatever of subsistence. We had on board, fortunately, a young American
named Elwell, who had lived several years in Santiago, and was well
acquainted not only with its resources, but with a large number of its
citizens. He said that there was a club there known as the
Anglo-American Club, organized and supported by the foreign merchants of
the city and the English cable-operators. Of this club he was one of the
organizers and charter members, and although it had been closed during
the blockade and siege, it would probably be reopened at once, and with
an introduction from him I could get a r