284 The Rough Riders 



were allotted some of these ships being at the dock 

 and some in mid-stream. After a couple of hours' 

 search, Colonel Wood found Colonel Humphrey 

 and was allotted a ship. Immediately afterward I 

 found that it had already been allotted to two other 

 regiments. It was then coming to the dock. Col- 

 onel Wood boarded it in mid-stream to keep posses- 

 sion, while I double-quicked the men down from the 

 cars and got there just ahead of the other two regi- 

 ments. One of these regiments, I was afterward in- 

 formed, spent the next thirty-six hours in cars in 

 consequence. We suffered nothing beyond the loss 

 of a couple of meals, which, it seems to me, can 

 hardly be put down to any failure in the quantity 

 of supplies furnished to the troops. 



We were two weeks on the troop-ship Yucatan, 

 and as we were given twelve days' travel rations, 

 we of course fell short toward the end of the trip, 

 but eked things out with some of our field rations 

 and troop stuff. The quality of the travel rations 

 given to us was good, except in the important item 

 of meat. The canned roast beef is worse than a 

 failure as part of the rations, for in effect it amounts 

 to reducing the rations by just so much, as a great 

 majority of the men find it uneatable. It was coarse, 

 stringy, tasteless, and very disagreeable in appear- 

 ance, and so unpalatable that the effort to eat it 

 made some of the men sick. Most of the men pre- 

 ferred to be hungry rather than eat it. If cooked in 

 a stew with plenty of onions and potatoes i.e., if 



