Quote Originally Posted by jmm99 View Post
Dayuhan: how long would it take to get from Lanang to Basey - by quickest means of 1902 travel ?
Interesting how a thread on a space expedition gets to walking across Samar... anything is possible I guess.

Linear distance (the place once called Lanang, mouth of the Lanang river, is now called Llorente) is a bit under 35 miles. Even today you'd have to walk. Obviously you wouldn't walk in a straight line: central Samar has large areas of limestone karst country that just need to be avoided, cliffs, caves, sinkholes, very dense vegetation.

Small fit group with a good local guide, 2-3 days. 80 loaded people with unreliable guides or guides they don't trust could blunder around out there forever, going in circles.

When I first read about this expedition, long ago, it struck me as sheer lunacy, driven mainly by that late 19th century explorer drive, the whole "boldly go where no (white) man has gone before" thing. No logic to it at all. The telegraph route was superfluous; they were already laying cable from Basey to Balangiga and from Balangiga there's a perfectly easy coastal/plain route to Llorente.

December is the start to the east coast rainy season, weather would have been miserable and working up rivers not feasible. Worst possible time to do it. A group that size is an outright liability in the jungle, slows everything down and you can't possibly feed them. My understanding from accounts is that even a few days in the expedition was obviously in trouble, moving way too slowly, running out of food, and poorly equipped for conditions. The logical (though possibly not heroic) choice would have been to recognize it as a bad job, go back and plan again. I don't half blame the porters for the mutiny; they'd probably been press-ganged to start with and they must have felt they were at the mercy of a bunch of lunatics bent on suicide.

It's really not a unique story, though on a greater scale than mot like it. Most US casualties during that war were from disease, not combat; inexperience in the tropics was far more fatal than the insurrectos. You had whole units out in tropical rainy seasons in wool socks and boots, doing daily marches. A week of that and your feet are rotting and infected, and antibiotics weren't in the picture...