any sign of fell intent upon our part the merchants allowed themselves to be coaxed back into their places of business.  The cafes were once more thronged.  Semi-weekly concerts were given in the Plaza Principal by the band of the Eleventh Infantry and the Banda del Bomberos, in alternation.  Balls, dinner-parties, and flirtations resumed their interrupted course, gathering new zest and brilliancy from the foreign element within the gates.  All the Americans began to study Spanish, and all the Puerto Ricans to study English, without particularly gratifying results on either side.  Cocking-mains, local games of chance, and more hectic immoralities were set forth for the delectation of the private soldiers; while I have personal knowledge of at least one quasi-clandestine bullfight, that may be best described as a furtive fizzle.

Strict measures were taken by the brigade commander to prevent anything resembling disorderly conduct among his men, and though these laurel-crowned heroes, under the influence of a wonderfully cheap rum, were seized at odd moments with an evident desire to start the war all over again, there was not much difficulty encountered in maintaining a degree of decorum that was highly satisfactory.

The sanitation of the municipality was rigorously inquired into, and regulated; but it is only justice to the residents of Mayaguez to say that little reform was necessary in this regard, as the current statistics of mortality and disease amply proved.  Of the few changes made, however, one may be specifically mentioned.

[Illustration:  A Ruined Church along our Line of March.]

[Illustration:  A Puerto Rican Laundry.]

It was the custom whenever a peasant died to carry the corpse to the cemetery in a coffin hired at transient rates, and then, having dumped the deceased into a shallow grave, to return what is facetiously known as the “wooden overcoat” to its original owner, for further service.  This was bad enough, considering the danger of infection thus engendered; but much worse remains behind.  It seems that the plot of ground reserved for dead paupers was very circumscribed.  So it had become necessary to bury four or five bodies in the same hole, the last one in being perhaps no more than six inches from the light of day.  And, as if this state of affairs were not already sufficiently horrible, we found that the congestion was sometimes still further relieved by a wholesale emptying of graves, the bones thus removed being thrown into some adjacent corner above ground, where they lay undisturbed in the hot sunshine and smelt to heaven.  This ghastly practice was summarily stopped.

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