is almost as broad as the Ohio, and, in its snaky turns, crooked as the Mississippi.  The banks seem to be prevented from washing away by the dense matting of grasses, and the overhanging thickets, imposing in luxuriance.  The houses are close to the water, for the tidal river does not rise and fall enough to disturb the inhabitants.  There are mountains a few miles away east and south—­big lumps of blue.  The stream that furnishes pure water to Manila is from the mountains, and tapped near the mouth, where it empties into the Pasig, seven miles from the city.  Manila is widespread, and of structures whose height has been moderated by experience of earthquakes.  There is a great deal of marshy land, and rice fields, and the jungles, so thick and thorny, and the grasses so tall, fibrous, and rasping, that the marching of columns of soldiers is excessively fatiguing.  It was a terrible task that was cut out for our men, by the delay in the Senate, mischievously elongated, the insurgents having fortified themselves in a way that they knew would have been utterly impervious by Spaniards.  The military leaders of the Filipinos have the explanation to offer, if they have the enlightenment to comprehend their own predicament, as a discomfited mass of fugitives, that they never, before the American regulars and volunteers charged them, met soldiers who would not have retreated in dismay from the fiery ambuscades.  The achievement of the Americans in confronting, rushing and routing the array, formidable in numbers, of natives, gathered with great expectations of a victory that would convert them into the barbaric conquerors of a civilized community—­the consecutive and conclusive victories over them that covered our arms, will have honorable distinction, of putting soldiers to the proof and finding them pure steel, for a long time to come.  Our boys, weary of the aggressive attitude of the still insurgent crowds, though the power of Spain had been broken, welcomed with cheers the order to charge; and it has been many days since there has been a trial of manliness more severe, or testimony of devotion more true, and of the staunch fighting quality of the troops whose only way out of difficulty was to find the enemy and drive them headlong.

It is not to be forgotten, while the flag of the nation flies, that the brave regiments that will bear upon their banners the name Manila, with the dates of February, 1899, are from all sections of the country, from the Alleghenies to the Pacific.  They come from western Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Wisconsin, the Dakotas, Oregon, Washington, Wyoming, Utah, Montana, Idaho, and California, and as Admiral Dewey said so well of the crews of his ships on his immortal May day, “There was not a man in the fleet who did not do his duty, and no man did more.”  It is, as Admiral Schley said of the famous naval victory on the Southern Cuban coast, “There is glory enough to go around.”  Take the list of regiments and batteries and troops