The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, July 3, 1898, Page 20

THE SAN FRANCISCO CALL, SUNDAY, JULY 3, 1898. AMERICAN SOLDIERS IN CAMP AND BATTLE .Péb/fney Bigelow Compares Our Regulars and Volunteers Other Crack Nations of the World. This Article Is Covered by General Copyright. HE American regular is differ- ent from anything ‘I have yét encountered in‘‘the ‘afmies of Europe. The - Ru an has of c¢ourdge; . the unequaled’ for ‘dis i is A lusty ar goiis “well,: and-- of an has the most 1-teav or: he.is, our firs \erican when all yositl any.of these. the: American regular would have to make -a composite picture ining some- thing of the Boer of something of the £ soldfer -is .of a'| With Those of the cause the English officer represents the spirit of the enterprise, courage and high breeding. The Boer, on the other hand, typifies the element of silent, dogged, unpolished, clear-eyed home- spun, who does not care much for rul- ing others, and cares less still for be- ing governed against his will. The American soldier is worried by very [ few rules, and these few are such as !he can thoroughly understand. I was | so fortunate as to accompany the first American expedition which had fight- ing with Spaniards on Cuban soil. The transport u carried two companies | of the First Regular Infantry, and we | were gone about six days. The men during that time ~had apparently | 8 as though on a picnic. mted at night, for rea- | ould understand, but | of artlllery that would open upon our crazy transport so soon as we should have got the bulk of our landing party under way for the shore. Every private who went on this trip knew the situation as well as his offi- cers. There was an ominous silence on shore, and no unnecessary talk on board. ‘We had no bluejackets on board and had, therefore, to make use of the civ- illan crew of the transport, four men, with a cockswain named John Dono- van. This same John Donovan knew well that if he were caught ashore he would be treated as an insurgent or pirate along v _h the rest of the crew of ununiformed filibusters. But John Donovan never bothered his headabout international law more than to remem- ber that he was a thoroughbred Irish- man, with a coating of citizenship, and a profound contempt for the ‘‘dago” and all others not of his own skin and kidney. John Donovan was a splendid pile- ture of manhood as he stood up in the stern of the whaleboat, steering with his long sweep, and gulding his crew to where he thought the surf the least dangerous. That was not saying much, for the transport was anchcred off a coral reef, extending as far as the eye could reach in each direction. The waves broke high on this reef, and the men had to spring out of the boats and drag them for a distance of perhaps a hundred yards. Some of the boats capsized cutright, and in each case there were many minutes when the different crews were up to their necks in the breakers, holding aloft their rifles nd wondering why the Spaniards dld not seize this opportuni- ty of shooting them to pieces. As there were not enough deck-hands abstract but carries a sixshooter in case of accident. This forlorn hope of fif:y men was attacked from wn ambush by a .orce estimated at s_veral hundred. It might have been several thousand for aught these men cared. They hcd a splendid opportunit for running away in a pan- fc. They were In a thick forest, where they could see but little of the enemy and still less of their fellows. They had reason to think they might be cut off from their boats, and they knew that If they reach the beach alive the boats on .iand were not .nough to hold them all. They were not fighting elbow to elbow, and the rattle of the enemy’'s bullets was painfully sharp and continuous. If I heard it once T heard it . dozen times amon - the regulars in and about Tampa, “What s this war about, any- way?” The idea of liberating Cubans or negroes did not to them seem to be a very good one. There was not, so far as I could dis- cover, any particular enthusiasm for the cause in which they were nominally enlisted. But it was grand sport and they went at it with the same gusto | tkat they wou:l have exhibited if or- | dered to exterminate Apaches or grizzly | bears. ference betweea the professional and the volunteer in this war. The regu- lar is invincibly brave from sheer force | of habit. He is incapable of panic, as { e is incapable of vulgar patsions. He | ikfl!s his Spaniards as his surgeon am- | putates a leg, but he does not neces- And he e lies the essential dif- | | | sarily hate the man he kills. He loves | | the Spaniard who shoots straight. On | the contrary he despises only the -nemy who gives him an easy job. He | fights for the sheer .ove of fighting. events of business life. So while thou- sands crowded the sea wall and. the docks to cheer the third expedition on its way to Manila, but few noticed an innocent, little steam schooner, which lay, as if to escape observation, at the furthest end of the Vallejo-street wharf. She Is not a pretty boat, this Alice Blanchard; her round heavy stern sits low in the water, her -white painted spar deck gives her a vop-heavy ap- pearance, her battered sides and chafed planking show that she has been noth- ing but a marine drudge, a humble un- obtrusive cargo boat. But probabaly she is good enough to make Clipperton Island and load guano, as that is all she is required for. There are many signs of her mission to be seen about. The upper deck is being fitted with bunks, exactly after the not too luxu- rious fashion of a United States trans- port. The wharf is crowded with mis- cellaneous stores, boxes and barrels of all kinds are scattered about, and two huge flat-bottomed surt boats, heavily planked and built to stand hammering on a coral recf, have just been deliv- ered by a local builder. But most prom- | jent of all is a couple of huge iron mooring buoys, looking exactly like the boilers of a large steamer. There are enormous rings round the buoys, car- rying heavy shackles to shich a vessel may make fast, and the mooring cable stretched alongside is of the heaviest | make and best quality. All these things mean the expendi- ture of much money, but the enterprise has been taken in hand by men of mil- AT THE Terrible Creature, ERTAINLY as far as numbers go, we war correspondents at- tached to the headquarters of the American army for the in- vasion of Cuba are an uncom- monly strong lot. There are ‘over seventy of us here already, and it is said that passes have been issued by | the War Department to as mc..y more | who are still to come. Even ( all of us ldo not go to Cuba—and as things look } now it is possible that senile decay may pedition finally sails—still there may solid phalanx of a hundred war corre- | spondents ought to be enough to achieve all tha! any general can rea- has seen rough ® officers and men were | on the transport to row more than one| the regular West Point officer is at | lions, accustomed to dealing in large | re In th: way of siowing N % 5 2 Buropes at liberty to seek rest and re ion | g at 8 | 0 £ this hol v of W | G ton Island, the next |sonably desire in way e e e fuch a6 (he chiose. - Tha Merehest Fiule | Soian Tab. voluntooms, There waa o | e 1o a man Who' s0:dlors adore. They | fow years, will have more money spent | celebration of his exploits. HUMORS OF THE NEWSPAPER BLOCKADE AROUND CUBA. FROM SKETCHES MADE BY A CALL-HERALD ARTIST WITH ADMIRAL SAMPSON'S FLEET. B ANEWSPAPER CALM OEE THE 'COAST OR CUBA HERE S A SPANIARD COMIN (<} 2o, Z i 7L - ) i o~ = Ay g, ST . B WHAT SHE LOOKED LIKE AT FIVE MILES P Sima el : PANIARDS ™ y - SPEED INBICATOR — = R 2 AFTER THE CHASE S0QUNDS FROM THE FIRE ROOM there are not nor ever have been peas- | ants, and consequently our enlisted men have wholly lacked the clement of doclle servility’ which makes disciplin: in Continental .armies comparatively | easy. . - E - .The American . regular- gets a mini- mum pay of $13 a month—small enough, to be sure, considering the average rate of wages in civil life. . Yet-not only 15 it sufficient to attract’ good men to the service, but it holds them practically for life. i The quality which impressed me most in the regulars.at- Tampa .was the average Intelligence and - good sens: Of course I do not compare them hcre with picked volunteers -but with the troops of European armies.’ In Amer- ica there are no guard or eiite troops in the Buropean: sense, .and one regi- ment of regulars is presumably just as good as any other, at least from the _commanding general’s point gf view. 1 have never heard:a regular cfhcer curse 8 man or even use dffensive language to him; on-the eontrary, 1 have béen struck by the wholesome ie:ation be- tween officers and men. I cannut say as much for certain .volunteor . 1egi- ments at Camp Alger. > 1t 1s frequenfly imagired that men accustomed to much ilberty and a high ?tapdard of personal comfort are thera- ore. more difficult:to control = than troops ‘like those .of: Russla;- who are accustorned at- home: to be treated much like ‘dattle. My - experienge. does not tally. with this viéw. . I could “give several illus- trations from the-little that has hap- pened to the United States in‘this war. For instahce, 1-doubt it any.troops of Europe w ever 'for so long a’” time cormpelled. to-itve-in discomfort so ex- treme and ‘8o inne sary as.the bulk of the regiments about Tampa. I have already detailed much of what I saw while lfving in camp, and d6 not pro- pose to reopen:that.painful chapter. During that tinie,. however, I did not hear of any seripiis. bresch of disci- pline, There. must ve been plenty of muttering’ aniong- thé. men, but no- at- tempt was made to influence headquar- ters. ‘I moved fréely. among the compa- nies in the regiment Whose guest I was and the mén had ample opportunity of ventilating the grievances they.falt, but they preferred to suffer like men rather- than "expose themselves to thé charge of worrying about ‘matters of mere" comfort, In.some of th where: I huppened fo hav. tunity -of’ noting the matter, I found the average helght of the men decidedly higher than what ‘prevails in Europe. regiments I have: 8cen guard mountings where-! every man appeared. to be above 5 feet 9 in. height.. Both officers’ and seem to-he decidedly superior in this respect to .average foreign regiments I have seen.” The Russians have perhaps the largest. proportion of tall men, but outside of the. guards I doubt if any regiment of the Russian army has so large ‘a .proportion .of well-built, tall men. a8 say thé First or Twenty-first United States regular infantry. I made the reference to the composite plcture. of Boer-.and Hnglishman be- 24 4 the oppor- | men-| was that no one should smoke be-| tween decks. This was ordered not from any precedent in the navy, but for the very —ood reason that our cargo was largely made up of hay bales, which were on the same deck as the sleeping quarters of a large por- | tion of the men. During the whole of this trip I did not hear of a single man being drunk, nor did I hear of any complaints on ac- count of the necessarily hard life they | were compelled to lead. Not a single man had -~ hammock during the entire trip. There | | was room for very few down below. | Most of the two companies had to| .sleep on the two upper decks, which | in this particular craft were open to| the weather. Thus when it rained—| and it did rain very hard off the Cuban coast—the men clee-ing on the decks had to get up and stand huddled to- gether through the night—at least un- til the rain was past. Most of them were drenched through several times. However, all of them were s0 glad to get away from Tampa and see some- | thing of actual service that they had no fault to find. | The same men had traveled some three or four thousand miles by rail before reaching Tampe, and had been twelve days on the journey. during which they had been treated worse | than cattle. This I mention here only in parenthesis to illustrate how men of | so much intelligence and familiarity [ with good :iving are able to submit to | treatment which would be regarded as barbarous by officers in the Russlan army. . {. On the afternoon of May 11, at 3 o'clock, these two companies of United ‘States Infantry were ordered to disem- | bark from the transport and go ashore to fight anything that happened to pre- | sent itself. Our expedition had been coasting along the Cuban shore from Havana all the way to Cabanas, some | thirty "odd miles westward. To meas- ure the courage of the men who went ashore we must understand just how | much danger there was in the under- | taking from their own point of view. Presumably the Spanish garrisons | from Havana all the way to Cabanas | knew of our presence. If they did not |-it was their fault, for we coasted near to shore the whole day on a very con- | spicuous paddle steamer painted red. ‘We anchored within half a mile of shore and disembarked a dozen regu- lars on a beach of which we knew nothing excepting that it was about a mile from Cabanas, in which, accord- ing to our Cuban guides, there was or | had been a garrison of 2000 Spaniards. | _According to all the probabilities, a | Spanish force would be on hand to dis- | pute our landing. Those fi¥st few men who landed through the surf went as | coolly as though by epecial invitation of friends on shore. There was no pa- | rade of fine sentiment, no handshak- | ing, no address from the commanding ‘offlcer, no serving out of stimulating drink, which sometimes makes men careless of danger. Thick tropical bushes lined the beach, and behind these we felt confident that bunk or a| | ma Spanish nhn‘.l'-rlhooterl must be lying | In ambush, with possibly a small piece lack of them from the privates. was my German friend, Buerger, had served in the Franco-German war, had then served in the United States navy, had then been transferred to the army, and had already served Un- cle Sam eighteen years. I had many a chat with him during the trip and found him one of the few happy men I have ever met. He loved the service, | had no idea of betng anythingelse than a regular soldier, epoke English with a strong natlve accent, was proud of the German Emperor, but thought Ger y was goiag to the devil from too much government. Buerger stepped into his seat, picked | up his sweep and pulled for the Cuban shore with mechanical ense and am- phiblousness. There were iv6 soldiers altogether on board and about half of them went ashore, while the other half lined the bulwarks of the trans- port—their rifles ready. It was hard to say wi. h was the most dangerous, to remain on the transport or go ashore. Both were bad enough as picnie grounds. One shot from shore could send the rotten old paddleboat to the bottom in five fath- oms of water, witl. no means of saving life except by swimming amid sharks and breake There was a moment when about a dozen regulars stood alone upon the Cuban beach while the small boats were struggling through the surf to take off more men. But never was there among these or any of those who followed the s.ghtest hesitation to fol- low the orders given by the officers, The woods had not been reconnoitered previous to lanaing. They had not even been fired into by way of precaution. Nevertheless, this handful of soldiers at once commenced skirmisling into the unknown, and eoon enough the bul- lets commenced to sing about our ears. These were mnot picked r>n. They were taken as they happened to come. The commander did not ask for volun- teers to start from Tampa or even for the first landing party. He had to se- lect men to pull th2 sweeps not because any were more brave than the rcst, but simply for knowledge of rowing. Ev- ery man who was In that fight on that day was intelligent enough to know that his chances of seein, home again were hopel-ssly small. The mere idea of landing fifty men on an unknown beach in the neighborhood oi a strong garrigon was enough to stamp the en- terprise as equal in danger to that of Lieutenant Hi.bson, who corked the harbor of Santiago by sinking the Mer- rimac in the channel under fire from the Spanish forts. Th- secret of this peculiarly Ameri- can attitude toward danger i{s in the habit our men have of acting individ- ually. The American hatituauy takes care of himself where the Euro-»an is more apt to invoke the aid of a police- man. The American of the Y’estern part of this country is not prune to risk his rights to the slow and uckle justice gr the law courts, especially where the udge is suspe ‘ed of political ambition. Congequently the American type in- cludes a men who venerates the con- stitution of the United States in the things about theodolites, transit ma- | chinery, sextants and cube roots. He {looks like a dandy when he arrives fresh from the “Point,” but for all that he cannot be humbugged. The same | men who shirk their work under old | political colonels sudd nly straighten up when they have to do with a young | West Point lieatenant. That landing near Cabanas could not have been | made had the leaders been other than | West Pointers. This does not mean hat other men may not have exhibited | equal courage under other conditions. Here, however, panic anl massacre were averted solely because each sol- dier knew that his officer was to be trusted, and each officer knew that he had complete moral ascendency over the men under him. Now, West Point does not graduate either cowards or fools, have consequently conceived a great respect for officers from that school. It is a very unpopular school with pro- fessional politiclans, for there is no room there for the exercise of political favoritism. We notice that there is just now a disposition to weaken the regular regiments by drawing away from them the younger officers to serve on the staff of volunteer organizations. This is a _cruel injustice to the regular army, and it is done in order to weaken it and to make it appear as though the volunteers could accomplish just as much as the old seasoned regulars. The regular army needs all its West Pointers in this hour of national strain, for the courage of the rei-ular private is.the conflacnce he feels in the officer who leads him in battle. Take the same men who behaved so nobly in the fight I have just referred to and place tenants and I doubt if they would have stood their ground. They might have shot their officers in the back, and I, for one, could not have blamed them very seriously. We are doing a very dangerous thing in tampering for po- litical purpos . with the organization of the regular army. We are forgetting that the efficicucy of troops is based upon the respect of men for their offi- cers and the corresponding corfidence of officers in their men. Once weaken this bond and you produce a state of things t’ at can be compared only with a ship whose crew has lost confidence in the men on the bridge. POULTNEY BIGELOW. STARTLE THE BIRDS ON LONELY CLIPPERTON: ISLAND. IVING as we do in the midst of daily din of battles, both by war's alarms many things now- adays get overlooked which at a more peaceful time would ex- cite great public interest. The land and sea, leaves the newspapers little room to chronicle the minar WILL and soldiers | them under political captains and lieu- | One Eknn'\' that he knows lots of mysterlous‘ who | | upon it than during the whole of its barren existence. Its fortune has turned, the rock hitherto deemed val- ueless 1s to be a busy place, and will doubtless put much gold into the pock- ets of its English owners. During the past year a good many pecple have heard of Clipperton, be- cause of the curious dispute as to the island’s ownership. In fact, the mat- ter is still shrouded in the mists of | doubt, though as far as the guano seek- ers are concerned, nationality is a sub- Ject of indifference. The island was discovered by an Englishman, Captain Clipperton, therefore some say it should be English. It is believed that the United States Government does not intend to contest the Mexican claim, at any rate all the negotlations for the present enterprise have been carried on with Mexico. The Pacific Islands Company, which has ac- quired the right to strip Clipperton of its rich guano deposits, 18 a very wealthy London corporation. men are on its board of directors, as well as members of some of the wealth- lest shipping firms in the city. Its af- fairs here have been managed by a well known traveler of the South Seas, Mr. J. T. Arundel, who has spent the last few months golng to and fro on the Pacific, looking after the vast interests which his company holds in all parts of the ocean. Naturally, the Clipper- ton enterprise concerns San Francisco chiefly, as the nearest commercial cen- ter, though some of the guano may be shipped to Honolulu, and some even sent to Europe in sailing vessels. The water front, which is always cu- rious in matters of this kind, has seen | nothing of the men who are to do the hard work of this expedition. Eighty Japanese laborers were imported from Honolulu. They came up in the Peru, and as soon as the steamer arrived, were hurried off to quarantine at Angel Island. It is risky work bringing these men here, because under the United States law their contracts are worth- less. The company, even though it paid the passages, had no legal claim on the services of its laborers, and if the men had been landed in San Francisco no one could have presevented their walk- ing away at their own sweet will. Fortunately the action of the medical officers in placing the Japs in quaran- tine relieved the company from this difficulty, and when the Alice Blanch- ard moved out into the stream the la- borers were quietly put on board with- out even having set their foot in San Francisco. Only three or four white men accompany the expedition. Captain Freeth, who is in command, is an experfenced guano seeker. With him goes a young Englishman, Mr. Burleigh, who has yet to learn how mo- notonous life can be on a desolate coral rock. For the task before these men is not a pleasant one to contemplate. Clipperton is merely a desert rock, an annular coral isle, without even a fringing reef to protect its shores from the thundering Pacific breakers. There is no fit anchorage for ships, hence the huge mooring buoys, which are to be put down outside the reef to enable vessels to hang on while the guano is being sent out in small boats. Titled | There can be no doubt that there will | be quite enough of us for the work. | The only fear is t. at when the fighting | begins it will be impossiLle to see the battle for the war correspondents. As to our many great talents, they re- | main to be proved, but it has already | been clearly established that nothing lin the way of facts will pass unre- corded. We shall clear the battle ground of facts as clearly as a patent carpet sweeper. # Here, while we are walting to begin, nothing—not the smallest incident—es- capes us, however secret it may be. The other day one of the series of little expeditions for the carriage of stores | and ammunition to the Cuban insur- | gents left here on a steamer called the | Gussie. It was, of course, most secret- ly despatched. The first essential to its success was that its going shon'd be known only to those on board and to the insurgents who were to meet it. But, close secret as it was, it did not escape us. Sixty odd war correspondents scooped it up, and on the morning of the day upon which the Gussie sailed every newspaper in America contained a dou- ble cilumn headline account of it, de- scribing the purpose of the undertak- ing, the time at which it would prob- ably start, the spot on the Cuban coast at which the stores were to be landed, with complete particulars as to the ar- mament of the ship and the strength of the force she carried. The Spaniards may not be able to shoot very well, but some of them can read. And when the Gussie reached the Cuban coast and prepared to land her cargo she was surprised to find that a considerable force of Spanish soldlers had been posted there to wait for her. She had a very narrow escape from a very tight place. It Is quite clear that whatever may he our competence 'or dealing with them, the facts will ncd escape us. When after the crestfallcn turn of the expedition | we were reproached with having caused its fallure we renlied with great dignity that since the lcader of the expedition had been guilty of the unwarrantable favoritism of glving permission to two only of our number to accompany him it was the manifest duty of the rest of us to knock tke stuffing out of the out- fit. When in reply to that it was urged that this did not justify our disclosing secret movements of the army to the the enemy we contemptuously Inquired whether any one thought that we were out here for our healths. The outcome of this was the estab- lishment of a cengorship. Al news dis- patches have now to be approved and initialed before they will be accepted at the telegraph office. The censor has my sincere sympathy. There is only one of him. With sixty ¢dd ravenous nemgltherera on the spot five censors would have been no mor¢ than a fair allowance. But only one has been ap- pointed. . He is Lieutenant Mylie, a ant and courteous yousg officer, who acts as one of General Shafter's aids. Since he began to eax‘fully read line by line sixty odd dispatches a day a Jook of gloomy despoddency has been et on his oountenance, the bright | thin our ranks somewhat before the ex- | survive a hundred or so of us; and a | 1 NEWSPAPER LIFE SEAT OF WAR Lively Experiences of the Correspandenfts With the Spaniards, the Rationsand That the Press Censor. From The Call Special War Correspondence. glow of soldierly enthusiasm’ which He. | wore a week ago has disappeared, and | he pathetically murmurs. that thls is: magnificent, but it is not war. I do not know whether to he sorry. most for the censor or for the trans- port officer. Every one of the author- ized correspondents Is entitled to trans- port for himself, his bagsage and his horse, and with regard to - baggage: every one of us is a complete little military expedition in.himself. There are only about a dozen transport ves- sels waiting down at the port. After we have been accommodated ‘I really cannot imagine how the army is.going to manage. -We should not " have been s0 heavily equipped.-if {t Had not been for the time. we have had in ‘which ‘to | think of things we could. not pussibly do without. You see, we have just-been sitting here day . after day for-thrée. .weeks: among the palm treés with nothing in the world to do excspt to walt:for meal times and to-morrew!s naval .engage= ment which never comes off. *:In fact, we have been leading ladies’ lives, :and naturally enough.we lave sought the feminine solace of shopping: It is a pity that some great. philoso- | pher has not been here to' observe us. ‘We should have supplied him with ma- terials for a convinéing chapter. on:the enervating influences of- idleness: ‘When we first canie here, &Il industy eagerness, from the North, :we - vied with one another in a severe-Spartan simplicity. The O'Shaughnessy, from Chicago, took us up to his reom.and proudly exhibited his kit—another:.pair of socks, another shirt, tio handker- chiefs, a cake of soap and a blanket, all wrapped up in a water-proof sheet tied with rope; that; in -additionto what he stood up in and what he car- ried in his pocket, constituted his outfit. The waterproof sheet, he explained, not only served as a wrappirng- for his kit but in combination with. a heap of brushwood which he would “‘cut with | his jackknife would constitute’his bed | and his canopy when the rainy. season in Cuba should set in. He rather apolo- gized for the soap; it would be handy, he explained, for washing his clothes, in case such a proceeding should be- come desirable;. moreover; he confessed shamefacedly that on the day --upon which we made our triumphal entry into Havana he had a dandified notfon | of washing himself. But he put himself right with us on this point when some one tauntingly said: : “Anyway, what's the good of soap unless you carry a towel along?” “Towels!” ‘said the u'Shaughnessy, contemptuously—‘“‘towels! Did ever any one hear of a man needing a towel when he’d got another shirt?” - I was secretly conscious of the’ pos: session of a kitbag with all:sorts of wildly absurd things in it, such as a comb and brush, and a patent safety razor, and—shall I admit it?—a folding shaving mirror; so mext- morning I severely edited my outfit and packed’a big parcel back to New York. i But Sparta was not the starting point of the Gulf Stream, and I doubt whether the Spartan warriors had their headquarters in a pleasure : resort hotel, with table d’hote three. times.a, day and nothing to do for long, lang- uorous -eeks. One morning Rathom of San Francisco, who -had ' been stretched out in a rocking chalr, wear- {ly fanning himself with his hat, jumped up suddenly and sald, with de-: termination: “Say, boys, I can’t stand - this . any longer. I am going out’ somewhere to do something.” 2 i “He strode out fiercely, and in an hour or two came back looking very hot anfl_ dusty, and said, “I've been for a ride. “On the trolley car?”’ we asked jeer- ingly. e “Trolley car be hanged,” he sald. “I've bought a horse. i A horse. We pricked up our ears. Rathom has bought a horse. That was an incident—an adventure, if you like. And, after all, a.horse was a very suitable thing for a war correspondent to possess. The cavalry had horses, . | and most of the officers, too, and to keep pace with the officers or to prop- | erly observe the conduct of a cavalry | charge a horse was- desirable, and in : fact necessary. : Some of us thought a well acclimated Cuban mule would be more reliable, es- pecially for mountain fighting, but the balance of opinion was that the horse was the nobler animal and much more useful when it became a question of getting down to the coast with the first news of a victory. out buying horses. - That afternoon there was a grand collection of horses standing in charge of long-faced horsecopers under the chade of the grove of palm trees in front of the hotel and market prices went up with a bound. It was not long before the horse dealers began to be ashamed of their earlier moderation, They grew very independent, and the appearance of some of the horses they brought along was nothing less than an insolence. At. first so long as the local stock held out the favorite description | of '@ horse was that he was ‘“accll- mated.” 5 2 “Say, mistuh,” said the dealers, with their languid Southern drawl, “yo doen wawnt er hawse as is suah ter pull himself ter pieces in er. week; yo wawnt er hawse er {s acclimated. Heahs one raised right heah suah, and es good es he waws Cuby bawn.” The word “acclimated” captured us all, and we led our prizes to the livery stable, where rates jumped up fifty per cent in two hours. s After the surplus supply had been exhausted they began to fetch horses out of milk carts—gentle, contempla- tive chargers, which, when you were | riding them, would stop from force.of habit whenever they canie to a house: Then they began to import horses from gradually ascending Northern lati- tudes, first from Jacksonville, then from Middle Georgia and Tennesgee and Kentucky—“the blue graws coun- try, mistuh,” they explained, “where de racehawses ig raised.” ———r——— THE DEFENSE OF HONGKONG. Lord Charles Beresford, speaking at York at the beginning of last month, very appropriately drew attention to - the unsatisfectory condition of Hong- kong from a military point of view. There is no subject on which her Maj- esty's Ministers, to whichever party they belong, speak more freely than on the defense of our coaling stations, and year after year large sums have been voted for the improvement of our mili- tary works at Hongkong. Year after year the same statement is made, too, that owing to some unexpected inter- vention the works had not been com- pleted as intended, but the Government now had them in hand, etc. Still, little or nothing has come of this and Hong- kong is practically dependent on the fleet for its defense. This is becoming a maore serious matter than ever, now that Russia has been put in possession of Port Arthur, and {s there in her own interest taking similar precautions So we rose with resolution and went -. -