Yokohama and Vancouver, were not reliably organized.  There were painful cases of masses of mail on matter precious beyond all valuation waiting at Hongkong for a boat, and an issue whether the shorter road home was not by way of Europe.  This is all in course of rapid reformation.  There will be no more mystery as to routes or failures to connect.  The soldiers, some of whom are ten thousand miles from home, should have shiploads of letters and papers.  They need reading matter almost as much as they do tobacco, and the charming enthusiasm of the ladies who entertained the soldier boys when they were going away with feasting and flattery, praise and glorification, should take up the good work of sending them letters, papers, magazines and books.  There is no reason why soldiers should be more subject to homesickness than sailors, except that they are not so well or ill accustomed to absence.  The fact that the soldiers are fond of their homes and long for them can have ways of expression other than going home.  A few days after the news of peace reached Manila, the transports were inspected for closing up the contracts with them under which they were detained, and soon they began to move.  When the China was ordered to San Francisco, I improved the opportunity to return to the great republic.  There was no chance to explore the many islands of the group of which Manila is the Spanish Capital.  General Merritt changed the course of this fine ship and added to the variety of the voyage by taking her to Hongkong to sail thence by way of the China Sea, the Indian Ocean, the Arabian Gulf, the Red Sea, the Suez Canal and the Mediterranean, to Paris.  Our route to San Francisco, by way of Hongkong, Nagasaki, Sunanaski, Kobe and the Yokohama light, was 6,905 knots, about seven thousand seven hundred statute miles, and gave us glimpses of the Asia shore, the west coast of Formosa and the great ports of Hongkong and Nagasaki.  The first thing on the Sea of China, in the month of September, is whether we shall find ourselves in the wild embrace of a typhoon.  It was the season for those terrible tempests and when we left Manila the information that one was about due was not spared us.  We heard later on that the transport ahead of us four days, the Zealandia, was twenty-eight hours in a cyclone and much damaged—­wrung and hammered and shocked until she had to put into Nagasaki for extensive repairs.  The rainfall was so heavy during the storm that one could not see a hundred yards from the ship, and she was wrung in so furious a style in a giddy waltz, that the Captain was for a time in grave doubt whether she would not founder.  The rule is when one is in the grasp of the oriental whirl to run through it, judging from the way of the wind, the shortest way out.  There is a comparatively quiet spot in the center, and if the beset navigator can find the correct line of flight, no matter which way as relates to the line of his journey, he does well to take it.  Often in this sea, as in this