The daily morning journal and courier., 1898-09-23

this sick man, reading to that one, or feeding another l see the little boat, with it's tell-tale yellow flag, come up to
 the stairs of "the pen" l put myself between 1t and my patients range ot Vl-
 sion; but though we both pretend to ig"
 nore it, we know too well what is going | on. Some stiff, still shapes, dashed to
 blanks, are brought down the stairs and put aboard the boat, followed by | mournful procession of soldiers, sick unto death. If the latter are alive when ! they reach Siboney, sixteen miles dis tant, they will go into the great yellow fever hospital, with perhaps one chance
 in, ten of recovery; and the shapes are bound for cremation somewhere down | the river.
 One of the nearby hills, greener than the rest, with gruesome suggestions of
 exuberant verdure, is faced on it's wa | terside with the high adobe walls and | massive gateway of a Campo Santo. | It needs no funeral urns and carven | crosses to indicate the purpose of that | enclosure; the vultures that continually
 circle above it, attracted by the odors
 they love, tell it's horrible story of | bursting vaults and shallow, rented
 graves from which bones are evicted to
 make room for new tenants. Nothing | affects our sick men so unpleasantly as | the sight of these disgusting buzzards
 which abound everywhere in tropical
 countries and have increased hun | dred fold in Cuba within the last three
 years. Impelled by their uncanny in-
 stinct of approaching death, they often ] fly so low over the open corridors of the | hospital that one could almost touch
 them with ones hand, and occasionally
 gorged bird drops into our midst
 reeking chunk of carron from it's tired claws. Such Is the soldiers horror of | these most loathsome creatures of the | air that a nearby glimpse of one will l sometimes throw a nervous invalid into l convulsions. And no wonder; for they
 have seen them on battle-fields, perhaps l tearing at the faces of dead comrades.
 I have heard the men talk about them
 selves, about the vultures and tell each other stories of personal experiences. 1 They all feel that the nauseating birds
 form the chief horror of war and know
 too well the meaning of their approach
 when the dead are lying in the under | brush. One man says that after the l liSltlHS at Ddllqulll ue lay lWo dcy Ol ! the field, wounded in the thigh, shooting ) at the buzzards as they settled down to i their feast, and that he believed anoth-
 CT hour of it would have left him rav- J ing maniac. Do you remember that | horrible old picture of the Jewish moth-
 CT madly beating off the vultures from | the bodies of her five sons hanged in a | row? There is a wounded Rough Rider
 in the hospital who looks the personifi-
 cation of courage, but who trembles and | shudders whenever vulture is seen,
 even afar off like black speck in the l sky. They say that he fought like a tiger in the taking of Santiago and nev | CT fiinched in the face of Spanish guns; but afterwards, when he lay in the
 long grass with bullet in his breast, | he went into an hysterical fit when he
 saw the vultures coming, covering , away from them and crying like a
 frightened child. He knew they would
 not molest his own body so long as life fingered in it, but there were still shapes l lying all around upon which the evil | birds settled in clouds. There was
 sound of tearing, and when the black clouds lifted there was nothing left of
 each shape but clear-picked bones and l bloody rags of uniform. Yet there Is a | good deal to be said in favor of the vul- 1 lures, the scavangers of the tropics. | Without them the pestilence which fol- | lows close on the heels of war would
 claim more victims than shot and shell. l Their work of sanitation, though terri 1 ble to think of, guided by unerring in | stinct to corpses hid in the chaparrel i which the burial parties fail to find, is as necessary as that of their fellows in
 the Persian Towers of Silence
 Immediately in front of the hospital l is the new immune" camp, their white
 tents strung in triple rows half a mile
 or more alone the water-side street of
 Santiago. When the sun shines the
 men appear to be having a pretty good
 time cracking noisy jokes, pitching | quoits and playing cards, grouped Ind- | an fashion around dirty blanket | spread on the ground. When the win
 dows of heaven are opened and the rain
 descends it is quite another matter! Then all not on duty retire to their
 leaky dog-tents, to squat or lie on the
 wet ground and pass the time as best they can. In these peaceful days there i seems no need of sentinels pacing the | quiet street in a pouring rain, and if 1 discipline" must be preserved at any ] cost of life and comfort, is not Uncle | Samuel rich enough to provide each of l his soldiers with a rubber blanket? If
 not, the people at large in the United
 States would be glad to supply the de-
 ficiency. A very small portion of the
 money we have invested in feeding un- | grateful Cubans would have furnished
 our boys with comforts which would no
 doubt have saved many previous lives.
 When their disagreeable duty is done
 the wearied sentinels crawl under their tents and lie down on the sodden i ground in their rain-soaked clothes, ! thus inviting malaria to assist the chil-
 ly dews of night and the fierce rays of | the monday sun in engendering fever. l But these men are "Immunes" you say. 1 Immune from what-from the natural | conditions of the climate and from all 1 the ills to which flesh is heir? Yellow l fever is among the least of dangers to
 be avoided in Santiago; for while it has
 reaped it's hundreds during the last few
 months, malaria, dystentery and other 1 diseases induced by improper living
 have been garnering their thousands in | the Campo Santos.
 FANNIE BRIGHAM WARD. I