Excerpt from Report of the Commission Appointed by the President to Investigate the Conduct of the War Department in the War With Spain, Vol. 6 of 8: Testimony

Q. Will you be kind enough to tell us. In your own way, whether or not, in the first place, you had occasion to visit any of the camps during the past summer: and if so, in what condition you found them, what particular conditions there attracted your attention, and what reports you have had occasion to make upon them?

A. I Visited Camp Thomas at Chickamauga just in an incidental sort of way shortly after the camp was established. I was down in the South on business. I own an interest in some property in Alabama, and was visiting it, and ran over to see the camp, but I want to answer your question as to what camps I visited. I visited that, but I didn't examine it closely and merely looked at it from an interested standpoint for a few hours. On August 12 I visited Camp Wikofi at th request Of the New York World, and I examined the site Of the camp at the time the troops from Tampa had arrived, or some of them, and none of the troops, I was informed, from Santiago had yet arrived there. I met Maj. Ira Brown, who was very busily engaged in erecting the general hospital. He had already con structed six hospital tents and had a few sick soldiers in them at the time. My attention was particularly directed to the water supply. TO me the camp seemed to be very excellent - the site of Montauk Point to me seemed to be an excellent site, at that time, except in regard to the water supply. It seemed poor and inadequate. At the time the water was being brought there in large water ing carts from a distance, and a well was being dug not a great ways from the Sheet of water known as Fort Pond. And about - well, about three or four hun dred feet from the Sheet of water. On the east bank Of the pond a stratum of water had been reached at about 32 or 33 feet depth, and water was entering the hole of the well from depths less than that, trickling down the sides. The men in charge of the work told me they had struck a splendid find of water at about 33 or 34 feet. I have had very wide experience in examining wells. I have been commissioner Of health for the State and the city, and I have held every position that a physician can hold in the health department, commencing at the lowest. And also the highest, and I do not think, from the experience I have had, that the well was either a safe well or that it would furnish an ade quate supply. The reason I did not consider it safe was that the water at the time of my visit, while it was good and sweet, yet the condition of the strata through which the water passed in reaching the water-bearing strata - the char acter of that strata - was such that it could not furnish anything but a poor supply Of water.2406 investigation OF conduct OF war with spain.

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