But Aguinaldo's claims of August 6th are not the only evidence as to the political status of the provinces of Luzon in August, 1898. Toward the end of that month, Maj. J. F. Bell, Chief of General Merritt's Bureau of Military Information, made a report on the situation as it stood August 29th, the report being made after most careful investigation, and intended as a summary of the then situation according to the most reliable information obtainable, in order that General Merritt might know, as far as practicable, what he would be "up against" in the event of trouble with the insurgents. [108] This report not only corroborates Aguinaldo's claims of August 6th, but it also concedes to the Aguinaldo people eight other important provinces--four south of the Pasig River with a total population of about 630,000, [109] the only four of southern Luzon not included in Aguinaldo's claim of August 6th, thus conceding him practically all of Luzon south of the Pasig; and it furthermore concedes him four great provinces of northern Luzon with a total population of nearly 600,000. [110] General Bell states that these last are "still in the possession of the Spanish," but practically certain to be with the insurgents in the very near future. "Insurgents have been dispatched to attack the Spanish in these provinces," says the Bell report. In this same report Major Bell said: "There is not a particle of doubt but what Aguinaldo and his leaders will resist any attempt of any government to reorganize a colonial government here." [111] When the insurgent government was finally dislodged from its last capital and Aguinaldo became a fugitive hotly pursued by our troops, he started for the mountains of northern Luzon, passing through provinces he had never visited before. The diary of one of his staff officers, Major Villa, in describing a brief stop they made in a town en route (Aringay, in Union province) says: "After the honorable President had urged them [the townspeople] to be patriotic, we continued the march." [112] They certainly did "continue the march." The Maccabebe scouts, of which the writer commanded a company at the time, took the town a few hours later, Aguinaldo's rear-guard retiring after a brief resistance, following which we found, among the dead in the trenches, a major other than Villa. Certainly, to read this little extract from the diary of Aguinaldo's retreat is to feel the pulse of northern Luzon as to its loyalty to the revolution at that time, and is corroborative of these claims of Aguinaldo made in August, 1898, supplemented, as we have seen them, by General Bell's appraisal.