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They have draft-animals that look like introduced Terran carabaos, and a few small sailboats and big canoes and bateaux on the rivers. They have gunpowder, which seems to be the last thing any people lose. "I was there, five years ago. I liked Tanith for a base. There's one moon, almost solid nickel iron, and fissionable-ore deposits.
I do not know how many draft-animals General Shafter had; but in four journeys over the road between Siboney and the front I happened to see only two pack-trains, one of them going forward with ammunition, and the other returning without load.
Vehicles of any kind are useless without animals to draw them; and General Shafter does not anywhere say that he had a superfluity of mules, or that he could not use all the horses he had. It was in draft-animals that the weakness of the quartermaster's department became most apparent as the campaign progressed.
The answer to the question, it seems to me, is obvious. The army had not half transportation enough to supply its wants. General Miles discovered this fact when he reached Siboney on July 11, and he immediately cabled the War Department for more draft-animals; but it was then too late to make good the deficiency.
General Shafter cabled the War Department for lighters and steam-tugs almost as soon as he reached the Cuban coast, and General Miles telegraphed for more draft-animals before he had been in Siboney twenty-four hours; but neither the boats nor the mules came in time to be of any avail.
You see women plowing; women hoeing; women carrying incredibly huge bundles of fagots and fodder on their heads; women hauling heavy carts, sometimes with a straining, panting dog for a teammate, sometimes unaccompanied except by a stalwart father or husband, or brother or son, who, puffing a china-bowled pipe, walks alongside to see that the poor human draft-animals do not shirk or balk, or shy over the traces.
Such handcart companies were organized with care; a limited amount of freight was allowed to each division; milch cattle and a very few draft-animals, with wagons for conveying the heavier baggage and to carry the sick, were assigned.
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