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On my way to join the troop, I met the Sixteenth Pennsylvania Infantry, escorting about eight hundred prisoners of war into the city, where they were to remain in incarceration until the arrival of the transports which were to convey the Spanish soldiers to Spain. When they halted near the old stockade in the city of Ponce I secured some unique curios including a Spanish coronet of solid gold (a watch charm), rings, knives, Spanish coins, and ornaments of various kinds.

Having finally reached my troop and reported for duty, I joined my old “bunkies,” Young and Turnbach, and learned from them that the soldiers were starving to death on a diet commonly known as “canned Eagan,” others dubbed it “embalmed beef” and swore that no cattle were ever taken alive that supplied such meat, as they were too tough to surrender. Suffice it to say it was at least a very unwholesome diet. The British bull-dog “Jack,” a “blue ribbon” winner that had been purchased at a London dog-show by Norman Parke, a member of the troop, was a worthy “mascot” and general favorite among the soldiers of the squadron. Parke, having been detailed as orderly to Colonel Castleman, which necessitated his absence from the troop, presented the dog to Trooper Schuyler Ridgeway, in whom “Jack” found an indulgent master. Schuyler, in order to demonstrate the quality of the “encased mystery,” had a can of it tapped, and invited the dog to sink his teeth in it. “Jack” with true bull-dog sagacity refused, realizing, I presume, that it would be attempted suicide, and withdrawing a short distance gave vent to his spleen by a wicked growl, after which a pitiful whine which seemed to say, “Home was never like this.” Reed, the ranger, said he had played the starvation game before, even to chopping wood in some kind lady’s woodshed for his dinner, and added that Spanish bullets were only a side line to the present grit he had hit.