order came.  Not for us to leave for the Department of the South, but to go to that lonely sun-parched sandy island Dry Tortugas.  In the face of the fact that the order was for us to go to that isolated spot, where rebel prisoners were carried and turned lose during the war of the rebellion, being left there without guard, there being absolutely no means of escape, and where it would have been necessary for our safety to have kept Sampson’s fleet in sight, the men received the news with gladness and cheered as the order was read to them.  The destination was changed to Key West, Florida, then to Chickamauga Park, Georgia.  It seemed that the war department did not know what to do with the soldiers at first.

Early Sunday morning, April 10, 1898, Easter Sunday, amidst tears of lovers and others endeared by long acquaintance and kindness, and the enthusiastic cheers of friends and well-wishers, the start was made for Cuba.

It is a fact worthy of note that Easter services in all the churches in Missoula, Montana, a town of over ten thousand inhabitants, was postponed the morning of the departure of the 25th Infantry, and the whole town turned out to bid us farewell.  Never before were soldiers more encouraged to go to war than we.  Being the first regiment to move, from the west, the papers had informed the people of our route.  At every station there was a throng of people who cheered as we passed.  Everywhere the Stars and Stripes could be seen.  Everybody had caught the war fever.  We arrived at Chickamauga Park about April 15, 1898, being the first regiment to arrive at that place.  We were a curiosity.  Thousands of people, both white and colored, from Chattanooga, Tenn., visited us daily.  Many of them had never seen a colored soldier.  The behavior of the men was such that even the most prejudiced could find no fault.  We underwent a short period of acclimation at this place, then moved on to Tampa, Fla., where we spent a month more of acclimation.  All along the route from Missoula, Montana, with the exception of one or two places in Georgia, we had been received most cordially.  But in Georgia, outside of the Park, it mattered not if we were soldiers of the United States, and going to fight for the honor of our country and the freedom of an oppressed and starving people, we were “niggers,” as they called us, and treated us with contempt.  There was no enthusiasm nor Stars and Stripes in Georgia.  That is the kind of “united country” we saw in the South.  I must pass over the events and incidents of camp life at Chickamauga and Tampa.  Up to this time our trip had seemed more like a Sunday-school excursion than anything else.  But when, on June 6th, we were ordered to divest ourselves of all clothing and equipage, except such as was necessary to campaigning in a tropical climate, for the first time the ghost of real warfare arose before us.

ON BOARD THE TRANSPORT.