The daily morning journal and courier., 1899-12-28
HORSES ON THE TRANSPORTS.


 The sufferings They Endured on the
 Way to Cuba Two Summers Ago. The stories of the sufferings of the | horses on the transports bound to Ma nila take hold on my feelings, for I saw horses and mules staggering in inn provised stalls between decks, on the way to Cuba; and I have seen few sights more pathetic. Down there, all the way from Lobos to Santiago, the trade winds, meeting the ocean current, stirred the intensely blue water into high seas; and through the sun shone resplendently all day and the flying fishes scaled and skinned and gilt tered, and the world above and about us seemed in the midst of the most beautiful festival it had ever enjoyed, the steamers pitched and rolled heavily on the great blue waves, and those who went from transport to transport In open boats found themselves battling big fluid mountains.
 And in the holds and the spaces be- tween decks, where sick men and sol diers and horses were penned up, the days were horrible. On some of the
 
 packed in loose, in masses, and these masses swayed and surged, the poor creatures leaning and straining this way and that, holding desperately with their hoofs to the deck In the attempt to avoid sliding, but slipping neverthe- less from moment to moment. and rat ting together in cruel heaps to leeward. like masses of pebbles following great receding wave down the slope of grav- ely beach It is no wonder that we left trail of dead mules behind us on those glittering tropical seas.
 But the horses were for the most part kept in little rough board stalls, pur- posely made so narrow that the animal could slip but a little distance. The sides of the horses were almost togeth- CT with the thin boarding between them. It was impossible for them to lie down. The thing which interested me most as I watched them in their rows, was to see how differently the in- dividual horses took it. The stolid, calm-souled kind of horses squared themselves, spreading their feet apart little, and seeming, as the mules had seemed, to cling to the deck with their UOOlS, they WUulu tNtu let tlle H6TCC lunging of the ship sway their heavy sides against the boarding of the stall without moving in their tracks; they would even fall asleep and nod, while the steamer was going almost on her beam ends. These horses were stand ing 1t well, and promised to come through the ordeal in fair condition.
 But always in the next stall to one of these philosophers there was a nervous, uneasy, high-spirited horse, who could not or would not, adapt himself to the rolling of the ship With a terrible, weary look of fear he glanced about to see if he could perceive another lunge of the vessel coming, or if there was any one who would help him out of the terrible place. Each successive wave found this horse as unprepared to meet it as if it had been the frst-he hardly braced himself at all, but with trem- bling little half steps tottered back ward or forward to jerk at his halter or be hurled against the rough manager in front; then to recover himself with another totterng, and to look all about him with another pitiful, appealing glance, showing the whites of his eyes, ana IOOklDS alWdyS loWdTu WUdleN6I man might be in sight and seeming to say: "Oh, why, why do they do it to me?" No wonder many such horses re- fused to eat, and by and by fell dead in the little stalls--an inert weight, pitt ful stiffened thng pounding perilously at the boards.
 And if the horse survived the dread full journey, what awaited him at the end of it? He was led at last out of the little stall, and pushed, with weakened, aching legs, to a strange place where a great, wide plank projected out over something that was vast and terrible and all alive; that seemed reaching up with great arms to seize him. Do you know that horses that have been reared inland are often seized with wild fright at the mere sight of the sea, even when their feet are on solid land? And here was the great black sea, all around and beneath this horse on the transport, reaching up to devour him.
 Of course the horse refused to walk out upon the plank; but there were other horses crowding up behind him, and men shouting and cracking their whips On! The horse screaming with fear, was pushed along; he was over the edge his feet were gone from under him and with a freightful splash he had fallen into the sea. Perhaps the next wave sucked him under the ship and