318 
MANILA UNDER THE AMERICANS. 
supports to guard the railway and Malolos Road. To eastward of the 
Hospital de Lazaro my map was unfortunately embellished with an 
elaborate design;, significant of the fact that it was a map of Manila 
and suburbs, so my sketch is in consequence wanting in detail, but as 
there are no very striking natural features until one reaches the 
neighbourhood of Sta Mesa, I have not attempted to fill in the vacuum. 
The guns of the crack Utah Battery were distributed along this portion 
of the line. The country round Manila is generally very flat and low- 
lying, but at Sta Mesa is a ridge where the Nebraska Regiment was 
encamped; this ridge appeared to be a fine healthy spot for a camp 
and certainly had other advantages, being in the centre of the 
American line of. defence and close to the main water supply for Manila, 
the water pipes running along the bottom of it; but to the eastward, 
across a tributary of the Pasig river, the close-country and houses in 
possession of the Insurgents were so adjacent that a small force of 
riflemen scattered in the woods would render the camp untenable. 
At. a small bridge north-east of Sta Mesa where the road crosses the 
tributary, an American sentry is posted at one end and a Filipino 
sentry at the other. I was informed that frequent cases of wordy 
quarrels had occurred between the sentries at this bridge, bat the 
American guards had strict orders not to bring about a row. I was 
shown all over the Sta Mesa camp by the Colonel of the Regiment. 
The men had ample accommodation, two to three men in a tent in 
which we would put two officers in a hill campaign in India; the 
mens tents were all small, about the size of our 80 lb. Kabul tent, 
which forms part of an officers equipment in India. The camp in 
consequence took up a lot of room, and I was surprised to find only 
one regiment, 1,000 strong, encamped on the ridge. The men were 
extremely well fed, all groceries, tinned provisions, etc., being im¬ 
ported from America and vegetables from China ports. The camp 
bakery supplied excellent bread, the flour being imported from 
America; the ovens, however, would be hardly sufficiently portable 
for a moving camp. The men of this regiment were of splendid 
physique and certainly looked very well, I was informed that they had 
had practically no sickness. 
The situatioKl At this time there were in all some 20,000 American 
troops at Manila divided into five brigades; four 
brigades were told off to portions of the lines of 
defence and one to the Walled City. General Otis 
was at this time in command of the whole of the land forces. 
Among the whole of the troops I could only discover two batter¬ 
ies of Field Artillery, these were split up into sections along the 
various portions of the defence and none were horsed. Some 
Coast Artillerymen had been sent over from California but few 
were employed as such, they mostly took their tour of duty with 
the Infantry. A small portion of cavalry had also been sent over, but 
these were employed for orderly work only, and mounted on Manila 
ponies. No horses had apparently been sent from America. Against 
this, the Filipinos had no artillery, but they had over a dozen Maxim 
ixx «J'£a,M.Tta.£a.:£»y 9 
1899 . 
