210 The Rough Riders 



detail of my men down to watch them and see that 

 they did their work under the orders of the chief 

 engineer; and we reduced them to obedience in 

 short order. I could easily have drawn from the 

 regiment sufficient skilled men to fill every position 

 in the entire ship's crew, from captain to stoker. 



We were very much crowded on board the ship, 

 but rather better off than on the Yucatan, so far as 

 the men were concerned, which was the important 

 point. All the officers except General Wheeler slept 

 in a kind of improvised shed, not unlike a chicken 

 coop with bunks, on the aftermost part of the upper 

 deck. The water was bad some of it very bad. 

 There was no ice. The canned beef proved practi- 

 cally uneatable, as we knew would be the case. 

 There were not enough vegetables. We did not 

 have enough disinfectants, and there was no provi- 

 sion whatever for a hospital or for isolating the sick ; 

 we simply put them on one portion of one deck. If, 

 as so many of the high authorities had insisted, 

 there had really been a yellow-fever epidemic, and if 

 it had broken out on shipboard, the condition would 

 have been frightful ; but there was no yellow-fever 

 epidemic. Three of our men had been kept behind 

 as suspects, all three suffered simply from malarial 

 fever. One of them, Lutz, a particularly good sol- 

 dier, died; another, who was simply a malingerer 

 and had nothing the matter with him whatever, of 



