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284 were allotted—some of these ships beiong 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 Colonel Wood boarded it in mid-stream to keep possession, while I double-quicked the men down from the cars and got there just ahead of the other two regiments. One of these regiments, I was afterward informed, 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 pat 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 die trip, but deed 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, tastdess, and very disagreeable in appearance, and so unpalatable that the effort to eat it made some of the men side. Most of the men preferred to be hungry rather than eat it If cooked in a stew with plenty of onions and potates—i.e, if