The weekly register. [volume] (Point Pleasant, Va. [W. Va.]) 1862-1909, 1900-07-18
soldier Letter.
ro1os1. PI. May sth. 1900.

suppose you think by this time
that / am dead, but | am not, by a
whole lot. / wrote to mother last.
L thought we were going to stay at
Iloilo, but the Major of our battal-
lion was appointed Military Gov
ernor by Gen. Hughes, and we had
to come to this Province. We
started from Iloilo January 10th,
by boat, for town by thename of
San Waukeen, which is fifteen
miles from Antique, whore we start
ed from. We landed at San Wau
keen the evening of the 10th, and
the next morning we started over
the mountain trail for Antique.
We stopped over night at a little
village mile and half from the
town. Tho next morning we
found the insurgents strongly in
trenohed at the ford of the river, at
the outer edge of the town. They
let us march up within three hum
drod yards of the river before they
opened up on us; we had two gun
boats and the Cruiser Concord
with us. When the firing began
the gun boats shelled the trenches
while we were forming skirmish
line; when in position we formed a
line mile long. Then we charged
the trenches and drove them into
the hills on the right of the town,
where they had two cannon, and
they we're making it pretty lively
for us with one of them. Then
Capt. French was ordered to take
his company and take to the hills
and capture the cannon, which we
did in grand style. One of the
guns was rapid fire Nordfeldt, a
German gun, one of the finest guns
in the world 1t can be fired at
the rate of fifteen hundred times n
minute. The other was an old
fashioned muzzle loading gun,
which was not of any use whatever
but to make noise. 1t was fine
to hear the gun boats and the rifles
fire; they made terrible noise, it
almost deafened mo; [ had ring
ing noise in my head for several
days. The fight lasted for two
hours and fifty-fve minutes. The
insurgents had seventy killed and
a;hundred and fifty wounded. Our
loss was one man slightly wounded.
He belonged to Company @, After
the fight we went to town five
miles from Antique by the name of
San Jose, where we had a little
skirmish, but no one was hurt.
We had several skirmishes since
then, but they did not amount to
much. We had ono man in our
Company wounded on the 18th of
February, and two more on the
18th, one slight, the other two were
severely hurt. They are at Iloilo
now, but are getting along all right.
The instruction seems to be about
over ON this island They are try
ing to come to terms of peace with
us now. Yesterday the insurgent
leader, Colonel Sahara came here
and went on one of the gun boats
to Pandan, to make terms with
Colonel Scott, the commander of
our troops in this Province. If he
does not get satisfaction from Scott
he is going to Iloilo to see Cover
nor Hughes I think the insur.
rection will be over soon, at least [
hope so, for we haven't done any
thing since we came here but march
from one place to another. There
are hundred and three important
towns on this Island. We have
been in all of them except three,
not to speak of the hundreds of
small towns and villages. The
population of this Island is a mill
ion and a half The people are
very lazy and do but very little
cultivating. They live principally
on rice and fish, and tropical fruits,
which grow wild. They are only
half civilized and have but very few
modern implements of any kind.
They do not use anything to eat
with but their fingers. They put
whatever they have to eat in bowl
made of wood for the purpose, and
eat it with their fingers. They
live in houses made Of bamboo
They make them about eight feet
from the ground and if they have
any stock, keep it under the houses.
[ have seen as many as five fami-
lies living in one house about
twenty feet square. They cook,
4 I