matter that I have seen washed down into the brooks by the almost daily
rains which fall in that part of Cuba in mid-summer, and yet it was the
unboiled water from these polluted brooks that the soldiers had to
drink. One captain whom I know took away the canteens from all the men
in his company, kept them under guard, and tried to force his command to
boil in their tin coffee-cups all the water that they drank; but he was
soon compelled to give up the plan as utterly impracticable. In all the
time that I spent at the front I did not see a single camp-kettle in use
among the soldiers, and there were very few even among officers. Late in
July the men of the Thirty-fourth Michigan were bringing every day in
their canteens, from a distance of two miles, all the water required for
regimental use. They had nothing else to carry it in, nothing else to
keep it in after they got it to camp, and nothing bigger than a tin cup
in which to boil it or make coffee.

In the matter of tents and clothing the equipment of the soldiers was
equally deficient. Dog-kennel shelter-tents will not keep out a tropical
rain, and when the men got wet they had to stay wet for lack of a spare
suit of underclothes. The officers fared little better than the men. A
young lieutenant whom I met in Santiago after the surrender told me
that he had not had a change of underclothing in twenty-seven days. The
baggage of all the officers was left on board of the transports when the
army disembarked, and little, if any, of it was ever carried to the
front.

Nothing, perhaps, is more important, so far as its influence upon health
is concerned, than food, and the rations of General Shafter's army were
deficient in quantity and unsatisfactory in quality from the very first.
With a few exceptions, the soldiers had nothing but hard bread and bacon
after they left the transports at Siboney, and short rations at that. A
general of brigade who has had wide and varied experience in many parts
of the United States, and whose name is well and favorably known in New
York, said to me in the latter part of July: "The whole army is
suffering from malnutrition. The soldiers don't get enough to eat, and
what they do get is not sufficiently varied and is not adapted to this
climate. A soldier can live on hardtack and bacon for a while, even in
the tropics, but he finally sickens of them and craves oatmeal, rice,
hominy, fresh vegetables, and dried fruits. He gets none of these