Their equipment consists of a gun, bayonet and cartridge box; their uniform of a straw hat, gingham shirt and trousers and bare feet; their transportation of a few ponies and carts, impressed for a day or week at a time; for quarters they have taken the public building in each village or pueblo, locally known as the Tribunal, and the churches and convents; from these details are sent out to man the trenches.  Their food while on duty consists of rice and banana leaves, cooked at the quarters and sent out to the trenches.  After a few days or a week of active service they return to their homes to feed up or work on their farms, their places being taken by others to whom they turn over their guns and cartridges.  Their arms have been obtained from various sources, from purchases in Hongkong, from the supply which Admiral Dewey found in the arsenal at Cavite, from capture made from the Spaniards.  They are partly Mausers and partly Remingtons.  Their ammunition was obtained in the same way.  They have used it freely and the supply is now rather short.  To replenish it they have established a cartridge factory at the village of Imus, about ten miles south of Cavite, where they have 400 people engaged in re-loading cartridges with powder and lead found at Cavite, or purchased abroad.  They have no artillery, except a few antique Columbiads obtained from Cavite, and no cavalry.  Their method of warfare is to dig a trench in front of the Spanish position, cover it with mats as a protection against the sun and rain, and during the night put their guns on top of the trench above their heads and fire in the general direction of the enemy.  When their ammunition is exhausted they go off in a body to get a fresh supply in baskets and then return to the trenches.

The men are of small stature, from 5 feet to 5 feet 6 inches in height, and weigh from 110 to 130 pounds.  Compared with them our men from Colorado and California seemed like a race of giants.  One afternoon just after we entered Manila a battalion of the insurgents fired upon the outposts of the Colorado regiment, mistaking them, as they claimed, for Spaniards.  The outpost retreated to their support, and the Filipinos followed; they easily fell into an ambush and the support, numbering about fifty men, surrounded the 250 Filipinos, wrenched the guns out of their hands and marched them off as unarmed prisoners—­all in the space of a few minutes.  Such a force can hardly be called an army, and yet the service which it has rendered should not be underestimated.  Between 2,000 and 3,000 Spanish native troops surrendered to it during the months of June and July.  It constantly annoyed and harrassed the Spaniards in the trenches, keeping them up at night and wearing them out with fatigue; and it invested Manila early in July so completely that all supplies were cut off and the inhabitants as well as the Spanish troops were forced to live on horse and buffalo meat, and the Chinese population