iment often had none, sometimes one, rarely two, and never three;
yet it was better off than any other in the cavalry division. In
consequence it was impossible to carry much of anything save what the
men had on their backs, and half of the men were too weak to walk
three miles with their packs. Whenever we shifted camp the exertion
among the half-sick caused our sick-roll to double next morning, and
it took at least three days, even when the shift was for but a short
distance, before we were able to bring up the officers' luggage, the
hospital spare food, the ammunition, etc. Meanwhile the officers slept
wherever they could, and those men who had not been able to carry
their own bedding, slept as the officers did. In the weak condition of
the men the labor of pitching camp was severe and told heavily upon
them. In short, the scheme of continually shifting camp was impossible
of fulfilment. It would merely have resulted in the early destruction
of the army.

Again, it was proposed that we should go up the mountains and make our
camps there. The palm and the bamboo grew to the summits of the
mountains, and the soil along their sides was deep and soft, while the
rains were very heavy, much more so than immediately on the coast
--every mile or two inland bringing with it a great increase in the
rainfall. We could, with much difficulty, have got our regiments up
the mountains, but not half the men could have got up with their
belongings; and once there it would have been an impossibility to feed
them. It was all that could be done, with the limited number of wagons
and mule-trains on hand, to feed the men in the existing camps, for
the travel and the rain gradually rendered each road in succession
wholly impassable. To have gone up the mountains would have meant
early starvation.

The third plan of the Department was even more objectionable than
either of the others. There was, some twenty-five miles in the
interior, what was called a high interior plateau, and at one period
we were informed that we were to be marched thither. As a matter of
fact, this so-called high plateau was the sugar-cane country, where,
during the summer, the rainfall was prodigious. It was a rich, deep
soil, covered with a rank tropic growth, the guinea-grass being higher
than the head of a man on horseback. It was a perfect hotbed of
malaria, and there was no dry ground whatever in which to camp. To
have sent the troops there would have been simpl