be carried on a cart. Upon arriving in camp, the advance-guard will
immediately establish the outpost.

3. The main body will consist of nine companies of infantry, one battery
and two platoons of artillery, and two Gatling guns.

4. The trains following the main body will be under the direction of the
brigade quartermaster, and their order of march will be:--

Hospital train.
Ammunition column.
Supply and baggage wagons.

The rear-guard will be composed of one company of infantry. A detachment
from it will protect exposed flanks of the train. If horses can be procured
for them, the commanders of the advance and rear guards will be mounted.

The above disposition for each day's march will be conformed to, unless
otherwise ordered.

By command of Brigadier-General Schwan.

GROTE HUTCHESON, _Captain and Assistant Adjutant-General._

[Illustration: Spanish Prisoners who were brought from Las Marias to
Mayaguez.]

As Captain Macomb's cavalry had not arrived at the hour appointed for our
start, we set off without him. And in fact there was little need of his
services on that day, our march being through a section of the island
already cleared of Spanish troops, and exceedingly slow and wearisome,
besides.

The route from Yauco to Sabana Grande lies for some two miles along the
level and creditable road leading to Guanica, suddenly going off at right
angles just beyond a picturesque sugar-mill into as uneven, crooked, and
hilly a highway as can well be imagined.

I cannot tell you in adequate language just how the tropical sun punishes
the unacclimated Northerner, especially if he be a foot-soldier tramping
along in a blinding dust, parched of throat, empty of belly, and loaded
down with a pack that would make a quartermaster's mule to fake the
glanders. If you have been there, it needs no words of mine to galvanize
your memory; and, if you have not, you cannot understand. This matter of
the soldier's pack and what to do with it became a subject of serious
consideration during the recent war, in both Cuba and Puerto Rico. On the
march, in the charge or pursuit or retreat, it is a senseless, clogging,
spirit-shackling incubus, a rank absurdity, and an utter impossibility. As
a result, after three days of active campaign the infantryman is seen gayly
stalking along with no burden save his rifle, ammunition-belt, and a wisp
of gray blanket, which seems to me to be a fatuous and footless condition
of affairs