ion. The result was that the captain himself went down and
became exceedingly sick. We at last succeeded in sending him to the
States. I never thought he would live, but he did, and when I met him
again at Montauk Point he had practically entirely recovered. My
orderly, Henry Bardshar, was struck down, and though he ultimately
recovered, he was a mere skeleton, having lost over eighty pounds.

Yellow fever also broke out in the rear, chiefly among the Cubans. It
never became epidemic, but it caused a perfect panic among some of
our own doctors, and especially in the minds of one or two generals
and of the home authorities. We found that whenever we sent a man to
the rear he was decreed to have yellow fever, whereas, if we kept him
at the front, it always turned out that he had malarial fever, and
after a few days he was back at work again. I doubt if there were ever
more than a dozen genuine cases of yellow fever in the whole cavalry
division; but the authorities at Washington, misled by the reports
they received from one or two of their military and medical advisers
at the front, became panic-struck, and under the influence of their
fears hesitated to bring the army home, lest it might import yellow
fever into the United States. Their panic was absolutely groundless,
as shown by the fact that when brought home not a single case of
yellow fever developed upon American soil. Our real foe was not the
yellow fever at all, but malarial fever, which was not infectious, but
which was certain, if the troops were left throughout the summer in
Cuba, to destroy them, either killing them outright, or weakening them
so that they would have fallen victims to any disease that attacked
them.

However, for a time our prospects were gloomy, as the Washington
authorities seemed determined that we should stay in Cuba. They
unfortunately knew nothing of the country nor of the circumstances of
the army, and the plans that were from time to time formulated in the
Department (and even by an occasional general or surgeon at the front)
for the management of the army would have been comic if they had not
possessed such tragic possibilities. Thus, at one period it was
proposed that we should shift camp every two or three days. Now, our
transportation, as I have pointed out before, was utterly inadequate.
In theory, under the regulations of the War Department, each regiment
should have had at least twenty-five wagons. As a matter of fact our
reg