198 The Rough Riders 



and though it was only some five miles or there- 

 abouts, very nearly half the men of the cavalry 

 division dropped out. Captain Llewellen had come 

 back, and led his troop on the march. He carried 

 a pick and shovel for one of his sick men, and after 

 we reached camp walked back with a mule to get 

 another trooper who had fallen out from heat ex- 

 haustion. 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 en- 

 tirely 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, 



