MANILA UNDER THE AMERICANS, 
313 
seeing the sanitary arrangements made for the 2,000 troops and 
probably 1,000 Filipinos living in Cavite. Sanitary arrangements ! 
Well, they were practically nil, and what will happen when the hot 
weather sets in one did not like to contemplate. If Hercules wished 
to repeat his feat with the Augean stables here was an opportunity ! 
On the north side of the Arsenal we found some ten or twelve case¬ 
mates which were all empty and in a dilapidated state ; each had an 
embrasure, but they were so narrow that no gun could have possibly 
fired over an arc of more than 15°. 
Spanish Off this shore lay the Reina Christina with one 
Rhi P 8 * funnel standing, the other nearly fallen, and two 
other sunken ships. Two small cruisers, the Isla de Cuba and 
Isla de Luzon had been previously raised and sent to Hong Kong for 
repairs. I had seen these ships in Hong Kong when they first came 
over and had carefully examined them, but could not find any trace 
on either which would lead me to suppose they had been sunk by gun 
fire. It seemed to me odd that no attempt had been made by the 
Americans to save any of the guns on board the sunken Spanish ships 
during the long months that the American Fleet had been lying idle 
in the harbour, since 1st May, 1898, the day of the battle of Cavite; 
it would have given the crews employment and practical experience 
in shifts under varied conditions. A few guns had been saved and 
were lying in the Dockyard, but these were all off the ships that had 
been floated; these guns had been painted over with red lead on the 
outside, but nothing had been done to clean or save the bores or 
breeches from further rust. From what I saw none of the guns of the 
still sunken ships appeared to have been damaged by fire, though 
some of the mountings had lost their shape, but this was probably the 
result of heating when the ships caught fire. With the exception of 
some twelve 4*7" guns which had been taken off the Isla de Cuba and 
Isla de Luzon , we saw no modern B.L. guns of any description in the 
Arsenal, they were nearly all bronze and cast iron smooth bores; the 
mountings too were of the same obsolete description, so that the arma¬ 
ment of Cavite could at no time have been formidable. We found no 
traces of any other guns having been put up for the land defence of 
Cavite by the Spaniards, the Americans must have either removed 
them or none had existed. 
We returned to' the Centurion at 6*30 just as it was getting dark 
and the musquitos troublesome. This was all we saw of Cavite as 
the ship went over to Manila the following morning. 
Manila. By 8 a.m. on Sunday, 29th January, we anchored 
about two miles off Manila. I went ashore at 9.30 
in the pinnace and landed on the right bank of the Pasig river about half 
a mile from its mouth. Finding a conveyance of the country at the 
landing stage, I told the driver to go to the English Club, but the man 
could not understand me, so I dismissed him and decided to find my 
way about on foot. I eventually found my way to the English Club 
at Ermita, where I hoped to find some men whom I had met at Hong 
Kong and in Japan, who had taken their families away when the 
