The circumstances in which this fever first made its appearance were as follows: When the army landed at Siboney it found there a dirty little Cuban village of from twelve to twenty deserted houses, situated at the bottom of a wedge-shaped cleft in the long, rocky rampart which forms the coast-line between Siboney and Morro Castle, and at the mouth of a low, swampy, malarious ravine or valley extending back into the foot-hills, and opening upon the sea through the notch. The site of the village, from a sanitary point of view, was a very bad one, not only because it was low and confined, but because in the valley immediately back of it there were a number of stagnant, foul-smelling ponds and pools, half overgrown with rank tropical vegetation, and so full of decaying organic matter that when I passed them for the first time on my way to the front I instinctively held my breath as much as possible because the very air from them seemed poisonous. The houses of the village, as a result of long neglect, had become as objectionable from a sanitary point of view as the location in which they stood. They were rather large, well-built, one-story frame houses with zinc roofs, and were erected, if I mistake not, by the Spanish-American Iron Company for the accommodation of its native employees. Originally they must have been very commodious and comfortable buildings, but through the neglect and untidiness of their later occupants they had become so dirty that no self-respecting human being would be willing to live in them.
Such were the village and the houses of Siboney when the army landed there on June 23. In view of the nature of the Cuban climate during the rainy season, and the danger of infection from abandoned houses whose history was entirely unknown, and within whose walls there might have been yellow fever, it was obviously somebody's duty not only to clean up the place as far as possible, but to decide whether the houses should be burned to the ground as probable sources of infection, or, on the other hand, washed out, fumigated, and used. The surgeons of the blockading fleet recommended that the buildings be destroyed, for the reason that if Siboney were to be the army's base of supplies it would be imprudent to run the risk of infection by allowing them to be used. Instead of acting upon this advice, however, the army officers in command at Siboney not only allowed the houses to be occupied from the very first, but put men into them without either disinfecting them or cleaning their dirty floors. Chlorid of lime was not used anywhere, and the foul privies immediately back of and adjoining the houses were permitted to stand in the condition in which they were found, so that the daily rains washed the excrement from them down under the floors to saturate further the already contaminated soil.
When we returned from the front on July 9, we found the condition of the village worse than ever. No attempt, apparently, had been made to clean or disinfect it; no sanitary precautions had been taken or health regulations enforced; hundreds of incredibly dirty and ragged Cubans—some of them employed in discharging the government transports and some of them merely loafers, camp-followers, and thieves—thronged the beach, evacuating their bowels in the bushes and throwing remnants of food about on the ground to rot in the hot sunshine; there was a dead and decomposing mule in one of the stagnant pools behind the village, and the whole place stank. If, under such conditions, an epidemic of fever had not broken out, it would have been so strange as to border on the miraculous. Nature alone would probably have brought it about, but when nature and man coöperated the result was certain. On July 8 the army surgeons reported three cases of yellow fever among the sick in the abandoned Spanish houses on shore. On the 10th the number of cases had increased to thirty, and included Dr. Lesser, chief surgeon of the Red Cross, and his wife, two Red Cross nurses, and Mrs. Trumbull White, wife of the correspondent of the Chicago "Record," who had been working as a nurse in the Red Cross hospital.
On the 11th General Miles arrived from Washington, and on ascertaining the state of affairs ordered the burning of every house in the village. I doubt very much whether this step was necessary or judicious, for the reason that it was taken too late. If there was any reason to believe, when the army first began to disembark at Siboney, that the houses of the village were likely to become sources of infection, they should have been burned or fumigated at once. To burn them after they had set yellow fever afloat in that malarious and polluted atmosphere was like locking the stable door after the horse has been stolen. But it is very questionable whether they should have been burned at any time. In a country like eastern Cuba, where at intervals of two or three days throughout the wet season there is a tropical downpour of rain which deluges the ground and beats through the most closely woven tent, a house with a tight zinc roof and a dry floor is a most valuable possession, and it should not be destroyed if there is any way of disinfecting it and making it a safe place of human habitation. All the evidence obtainable in Santiago was to the effect that these houses were not infected with yellow fever; but even if they had been, it was quite possible, I think, to save them and make them useful. If, when the army landed, the best of the buildings had been thoroughly cleaned and then fumigated by shutting them up tightly and burning sulphur and other suitable chemical substances in them, the disease-germs that they contained might have been destroyed. Convict barges saturated with the germs of smallpox, typhus, dysentery, and all sorts of infectious and contagious diseases are treated in this way in Siberia, and there is no reason why houses should not be so purified in Cuba. General Miles and his chief surgeon decided, however, that the whole village should be burned, and burned it was. The postal, telegraph, and signal-service officers were turned out of their quarters and put into tents; a yellow-fever camp was established in the hills about two miles north of Siboney; more hospital tents and tent-flies were pitched along the sea-coast west of the notch; and as fast as sick and wounded soldiers could be removed from the condemned houses and put under canvas or sent to the yellow-fever camp, the houses were destroyed.
In view of the fact that yellow fever had made its appearance in the army before Santiago as well as at Siboney, Miss Barton, acting under the advice and direction of Major Wood, chief surgeon of the First Division hospital, abandoned the Red Cross station at the front, brought all its equipment and supplies back to the sea-coast, and put them again on board the State of Texas. She also decided not to allow fever-stricken employees of the Red Cross to be cared for on board the steamer, and Dr. and Mrs. Lesser and two nurses were therefore carried on their cots to a railroad-train and transported to the yellow-fever camp two miles away. I went through the fever hospital where they lay just before they were removed, and made up my mind—very ignorantly and presumptuously, perhaps—that neither they nor any of the patients whom I saw had yellow fever, either in a mild form or in any form whatever. They seemed to me to have nothing more than calenture, brought on by overwork, a malarious atmosphere, and a bad sanitary environment. Mrs. White, who was also said to have yellow fever, recovered in three days, just in time to escape being sent to the yellow-fever camp with Dr. and Mrs. Lesser. I have no doubt that there were some yellow-fever cases among the sick who were sent to the camp at the time when the village of Siboney was burned, but I did not happen to see any of them, and it is the opinion of many persons who are far better qualified to judge than I, that yellow-fever cases and calenture cases were lumped together without much discrimination, and that the latter greatly outnumbered the former.
On July 15 the number of so-called yellow-fever cases exceeded one hundred, and the most energetic measures were being taken by the medical authorities on shore to prevent the further spread of the disease. Everything that could possibly hold or transmit infection was burned, including my blankets, mackintosh-cape, etc., which I had accidentally left in the post-office overnight, as well as all the baggage and personal effects of the postal clerks. Mr. Brewer, the postmaster, died of the fever, Mr. Kempner, the assistant postmaster, was reduced to sleeping in a camp-chair out of doors without overcoat or blanket, and the telegraph and telephone operators worked night and day in a damp, badly ventilated tent, with their feet literally in pools of mud and water.
On July 15 we heard at Siboney that Santiago had surrendered, and on the following day we steamed down to the mouth of Santiago harbor, with a faint hope that we might be permitted to enter. Admiral Sampson, however, informed us that the surrender, although agreed upon, had not yet taken place, and that it would be impossible for us to enter the harbor until after Morro Castle and the shore batteries had been evacuated. We then sailed for Guantanamo Bay, with the intention of landing more supplies for the refugees in that district; but inasmuch as we had been lying in the fever-infected port of Siboney, Captain McCalla, who came out to the mouth of the bay in a steam-launch to meet us, refused to take the supplies, and would not let us communicate with the shore. On the night of July 16, therefore, we returned to Siboney, and at noon on the 17th we were again off Morro Castle, waiting for an opportunity to enter the harbor.
CHAPTER XIV
ENTERING SANTIAGO HARBOR
As soon as possible after our return from Guantanamo, Miss Barton sent a note to Admiral Sampson, on board the flagship New York, saying that, as the inhabitants of the city were reported to be in a starving condition, she hoped that food would be allowed to go in with the forces. The admiral promptly replied: "The food shall enter in advance of the forces; you may go in this afternoon." Almost any other naval commander, after destroying a hostile fleet and reducing all the batteries that defended a hostile city, would have wished to crown his victory and enjoy his triumph by entering the harbor in advance of all other vessels and on one of his own ships of war; but Admiral Sampson, with the modesty and generosity characteristic of a great and noble nature, waived his right to be the first to enter the city, and sent in the State of Texas, flying the flag of the Red Cross and carrying food and relief for the wounded, the starving, and the dying.