We were two weeks on the troop-ship Yucatan, and as we were given twelve days’ travel rations, we of course fell short toward the end of the trip, but eked things out with some of our field rations and troop stuff.  The quality of the travel rations given to us was good, except in the important item of meat.  The canned roast beef is worse than a failure as part of the rations, for in effect it amounts to reducing the rations by just so much, as a great majority of the men find it uneatable.  It was coarse, stringy, tasteless, and very disagreeable in appearance, and so unpalatable that the effort to eat it made some of the men sick.  Most of the men preferred to be hungry rather than eat it.  If cooked in a stew with plenty of onions and potatoes—­i.e., if only one ingredient in a dish with other more savory ingredients—­it could be eaten, especially if well salted and peppered; but, as usual (what I regard as a great mistake), no salt was issued with the travel rations, and of course no potatoes and onions.  There were no cooking facilities on the transport.  When the men obtained any, it was by bribing the cook.  Toward the last, when they began to draw on the field rations, they had to eat the bacon raw.  On the return trip the same difficulty in rations obtained.—­i.e., the rations were short because the men could not eat the canned roast beef, and had no salt.  We purchased of the ship’s supplies some flour and pork and a little rice for the men, so as to relieve the shortage as much as possible, and individual sick men were helped from private sources by officers, who themselves ate what they had purchased in Santiago.  As nine-tenths of the men were more or less sick, the unattractiveness of the travel rations was doubly unfortunate.  It would have been an excellent thing for their health if we could have had onions and potatoes, and means for cooking them.  Moreover, the water was very bad, and sometimes a cask was struck that was positively undrinkable.  The lack of ice for the weak and sickly men was very much felt.  Fortunately there was no epidemic, for there was not a place on the ship where patients could have been isolated.

During the month following the landing of the army in Cuba the food-supplies were generally short in quantity, and in quality were never such as were best suited to men undergoing severe hardships and great exposure in an unhealthy tropical climate.  The rations were, I understand, the same as those used in the Klondike.  In this connection, I call especial attention to the report of Captain Brown, made by my orders when I was Brigade-Commander, and herewith appended.  I also call attention to the report of my own Quartermaster.  Usually we received full rations of bacon and hardtack.  The hardtack, however, was often mouldy, so that parts of cases, and even whole cases, could not be used.  The bacon was usually good.  But bacon and hardtack make poor food for men toiling and fighting in trenches