was the least prepared for us. Our
friends, however, would not be advised. Their idea of
co-operation was that every one was to act as he or she pleased,
at the time and place he or she selected; and that the Company
was to be responsible for his and her employment, food, shelter,
health and comfort at all times and in every place. So
thoroughly did they believe this that they did not even think it
was necessary to give the Company a hint that they were going to
Sinaloa, how, when, or for what purpose.

"Well! what was the result of each acting for him and herself?
Some 400 and more persons were dumped off at Topolobampo into
the brush and cacti, and over fifty per cent of these were
women, children, and aged persons, who became at once a heavy,
constant, and ever increasing care to those who were physically
capable of meeting the requirements of the movement. This
actually put upon every able-bodied pioneer a child, woman, or
aged person to attend to, to see sheltered, to have fed, etc.,
etc., besides his duties, and it added five times to the
expenses in the field which the Company proposed at first to
meet. But this was not the worst. The attention which it was
necessary to give to these non-combatants took the men from the
work that the Company expected to be done. This discouraged
those who were able and willing to work and piled anxieties upon
our best friends until they tottered under loads other than
belonged to the cause. Disease, death, and discouragement
followed. Those who remained in the States were frightened, and
the Company was left almost moneyless and powerless to assist,
even when it was most earnest in its work and in its wish to do
so.

"Had an army preparing for a campaign been recruited in such a
way, its friends would have demoralized and defeated it before
an enemy had been met. The United States Army, during the late
rebellion, was recruited in the following way: every man had to
be stripped naked, measured, weighed, examined, and reported by
a medical officer to be physically and mentally capable of
enduring camp life, before he was enlisted, and even after this
test and care, the records will show that thirty per cent each
year, without going into battle, became sick, died, deserted, or
went home, _i.e._, only 70 per cent of all those recru