form of a square. The parade ground being a square plot varying in size at different posts, around which are located the buildings. The officers occupying one side of the square; the barracks being directly opposite and the commissary and quarter master department generally occupying one side and the commanding officer's quarters and post headquarters and adjutant's office occupying the other side. At Fort Craig just outside of these buildings was an adobe wall about ten feet high. Next to the guardhouse was an opening large enough for wagons to enter the parade ground with heavy gates to close at night, and there were some small openings in the wall for other purposes, one being near the hospital. The walls of the buildings were of adobe with heavy timbers across to support the roof of dirt. The floors were what the Mexicans called "Jaspa" (pronounced Haspa), a kind of cement made of gypsum or lime sulphate which is found in great beds through a great portion of New Mexico. It is quarried or blasted out, heated to drive out the water or crystalization, then ground into a powder and when mixed with sand and water makes a pretty fair quality of cement. It was used altogether in the floors for the military posts along the Rio Grande.

The water supply at Fort Craig was obtained from the Rio Grande river and there were times about June when the snows melted in the mountains that it answered very well to a description I once read of the Missouri river water, "Too thick to drink and too thin to cultivate." This was a great bother to us during the summer rise for it was persistent for more than a month. I conceived the idea of making a filter by making a good sized ball of jaspa and charcoal which I held together by mixing a little cotton batting carefully in the mortar and kneading it into a very stiff paste. After it hardened I bored a hole in the ball and inserted a rubber tube and then put the ball in a "Tanaja," a large ungalvanized earthen jar holding eight or ten gallons of the muddy water. This jar was put in an army blanket and was swung in the hallway. The jar being porous would let enough water through to keep the blanket damp, which cooled the water. By swinging another tanaja just below the first and having it blanketed in the same way, and having a rubber tube connecting the two, I had a filter that furnished clear, sparkling, cool water. I put one in the hospital and they became quite the vogue at the post.

The wood supply was brought from the mountains some thirty miles away. Trains comprising several wagons would be sent out in charge of a wagonmaster with men enough to load them promptly and by starting early and returning late they sometimes made the round trip in two days, but generally they were three days out.

For a month or more I was in the officers' mess, consisting only of single men or those whose families were away. The meals were rather stately affairs and to me seemed a little tinged with the ridiculous in that far-away place. There was a colored man standing behind each officer's chair dressed in the proper toggery to do his duty and to give him every attention. I never saw any more perfect service at any hotel and the table was the best the commissary department and the surrounding country would provide.

Prices outside the commissary were much higher than we had then in Iowa. Eggs were fifty cents a dozen; butter a dollar and a quarter a pound. I paid these prices regularly when I started my own mess. I had what was called a student's lamp in those days and paid five dollars a gallon for coal oil, as it was then called. Of course that was before oil tanks were known and it was carried across the plains in barrels, maybe in hot weather, and on slow moving ox trains, being months on the way. The evaporation would necessarily be very great, and by the time the sutler's store got its percent of profit (probably one hundred percent or more) one could easily see that fifty cent oil in Iowa could easily be five dollars in New Mexico. Some years later at Fort McRae, further down the river, we got it for two dollars and a half per gallon by sending a five gallon can to Santa Fe to be filled.

Thinking that I was a fixture at Fort Craig for some time I wrote my wife and asked her to join me after her visit in the East was over. In view of her coming I started a mess of my own and had a little colored drummer boy detailed as servant and cook. He was as black as night and I called him Sandy. To start with I laid in a pretty good supply of commissaries, among them ten pounds of cut loaf sugar. I had my first dinner on Saturday and the following Monday morning I asked Sandy if anything was needed. "Yas sah, Doctor, we needs some moah sugar." Why Sandy, I said, we got ten pounds of each kind on Saturday, which kind do you want? "We needs some moah cut loaf sugar, sah," he said. What, cut loaf sugar? "Yas sah, Doctor, it takes a powerful sight 'o sugar for deserts." Well all right Sandy, I said, I'll see about it. I thought it was going pretty fast for only two dinners so I stopped on my way back from the hospital at Major Sweet's quarters and asked Mrs. Sweet how much cut loaf sugar they used. She was bright and quick as a flash, and wished to know, while trying to look serious, why I asked such a question. Finally she broke out into a jolly rippling laugh and said, "I know what's the matter, Sandy has been carrying your sugar off to the laundresses." I told Sandy when I returned to my quarters that I did not mind his having all the sugar he wanted himself but I did not want to feed all the laundresses at the post on cut loaf sugar. He did better afterwards but I still think the laundresses got some sugar.

There is no other part of the country so far as I know where skunks were so plentiful as in New Mexico. They were a nuisance at all the posts at which I served in that territory, but if possible were worse at Fort Craig than elsewhere. One evening I had gone to the post trader's to get my mail and upon my return I found the odor in my quarters so pronounced that I investigated and found that Sandy had killed a skunk in the kitchen. He explained by saying that he had tried to drive it out and could not do so and that he had killed it. I told him to open up all the windows and doors and scrub the kitchen floor and I went back to the sutler's store in self protection. I did not return until late when I found the odor worse than ever and Sandy explained the matter this time by saying another skunk came in and had made its way into my bed-room and got under the wardrobe and he could not get it out and was compelled to kill it. This he did by punching it to death. The result can be imagined, but not very well described. I slept on a cot in the front room for some time afterwards and found hunting and out-door exercise more interesting than remaining in my quarters.

The sand storms at Fort Craig were something to remember, or rather I should say impossible to forget. They are simply a straight wind blowing with terrific force and loaded with fine sand and dust and very fine gravel. I remember particularly one that came up one day when the steward and I were making out the monthly reports at the hospital. The windows and doors were closed and everything made as snug as possible, yet when the storm was over one made tracks when walking across the floor as visible as he would have made walking along a sandy highway. It was a serious matter to be out in one of them, for unless the face was covered one would suffer severely from the stinging sand and fine gravel, and everything a short distance away was shut out from sight. There are also some pleasant things to remember of my experience at this post. The hunting, particularly of wild fowl, was very good, the ducks remaining late in the spring and returning early in the fall. The sunsets were