Santiago is a dirty place.  All the sewers are on top of the ground.  This is Siboney, the town we burned about five weeks ago to keep out the fever.  I have a few souvenirs I hope to take back to the States with me—­two Spanish gold pieces, one machete, a Krag gun, a set of prayer beads, and a piece of shell that struck me in the hip.  I was laid up only two days.  The shell struck a tree and bounded off, hitting me.  The tree broke the force.  If I ever get out of Cuba I do not want to see it again, even on the map.  By the time you get this I expect to be on Long Island, New York.  Hinton went back to the States a few days ago.  Edgar was too weak to go.  About 500 convalescents went home, and there are about 1,000 of the boys here too weak to go.  It is pretty tough to see the boys dying here.  Our detail has to dig graves.  My back is nearly broke from digging and using the pick.  If you do not dig fast the major orders your arrest and off to the guardhouse you go.  Your brother.

James Purcell, Company G, Eleventh Infantry, writes the following interesting letter: 

Camp Ponce, Between Town of Ponce and Shipping Port, August 6.

Dear Ones and All:  I hope you received my letter from Samono Bay and that you are all well.  I am fine, as well as ever I have been.  We arrived here last Monday and landed on Tuesday.  We were on the water eleven days and it was a grand trip and all enjoyed it greatly, but if would have been much better if we had good food.  What we ate consisted of canned beef, hardtack, canned beans and tomatoes with coffee twice a day.

Well, now to tell you something about this place.  It is without exception the prettiest place I ever saw.  We have about five hundred Spanish prisoners here in this camp and leave to-night by train to cross the mountains and clear the road for the main body of troops, which will advance on San Juan.  You will probably know the outcome long before this letter reaches you.  We are camped on the roadside.  The thoroughfare is macadamized from one end of the island to the other, and as fine a road as one ever saw.  It would be a grand place to have a bicycle.  Our camp is always crowded with hungry, starving Cuban men, women and children, some of them naked and the rest only partially clothed.  They will do almost anything for our hardtack, for some of them never had any flour, and when we purchase we have to pay two cents for a small roll, but while we are in camp we make our own bread and they go crazy for some of it.

There is plenty of tobacco here and the way we get it is to give one hardtack for a cigar.  The men and women are all cigarmakers, and, as our commissary is not yet open, we have to make native cigars.  All the people here seem glad to have the Americans take the island.