Page:From Yauco to Las Marias.djvu/43

Rh As Captain Macomb's cavalry had not arrived at the hour appointed for our start, we set off without him. And in fact there was little need of his services on that day, our march being through a section of the island already cleared of Spanish troops, and exceedingly slow and wearisome, besides.

The route from Yauco to Sabana Grande lies for some two miles along the level and creditable road leading to Guanica, suddenly going off at right angles just beyond a picturesque sugar-mill into as uneven, crooked, and hilly a highway as can well be imagined.

I cannot tell you in adequate language just how the tropical sun punishes the unacclimated Northerner, especially if he be a foot-soldier tramping along in a blinding dust, parched of throat, empty of belly, and loaded down with a pack that would make a quartermaster's mule to fake the glanders. If you have been there, it needs no words of mine to galvanize your memory; and, if you have not, you cannot understand. This matter of the soldier's pack and what to do with it became a subject of serious