Our last plate of soup was sold to a Maine soldier who paid for it his last five cents. He was nearly naked and incessantly shivered from the cold. The writer found him the following morning, after a night of rain, to which he was exposed, with his knees drawn up to his chin in the instinctive effort to bring the surfaces of his body together for warmth. With difficulty his frame was straightened out for burial.
The profit of this business for several weeks gave to our group of six one fairly good meal each day and made possible the survival of those of our number who finally emerged from this awful prison life.
CHAPTER IV.
A DEARTH OF WATER.
If the food supply of Andersonville was bad, the water supply was worse. To understand the situation and to see how little was done to overcome the difficulties involved, and to make the most of the existing facilities for the relief of the suffering, one has to consider the formation of this prison encampment.
The surface of the interior consisted of two hillsides, sloping respectively north and south towards the center which was occupied by a swamp of nearly four acres. This was traversed by a sluggish creek which was some five feet wide and six inches deep, and made its way along the foot of the south slope. Up the stream were located the headquarters of Capt. Wirtz, the camps of the Confederate artillery and infantry and the cook-house for the prisoners. The drainage of these localities entered the creek which flowed into the prison through spaces between the stockade timbers, and polluted the water which was the chief supply of the prison, and which, at midnight, in its clearest condition, was the color of amber. The intervening space at the foot of the north hill was a wide morass, and when overflowed by rains became a vast cesspool on which boundless swarms of flies settled down and laid their eggs; which were speedily hatched by the fervent heat of the nearly tropical sun, and became a horrible undulating mass. On a change of wind the odor could be detected miles away; indeed it was reported that the people of Macon petitioned General Howell Cobb, the military governor of Georgia, for a removal of the prison located sixty miles away, lest an awful pestilence sweep over their country!
The turkey buzzards, birds of ill omen, would come up against the wind, alight on the bare limbs of the tall pines overlooking the prison, and circle over the grizzled city as if waiting to descend for a carrion feast.
When we entered the prison on May 23rd, our detachment of two hundred and seventy men was scheduled fifty-five, indicating the presence of fourteen thousand eight hundred and fifty prisoners. The number steadily rose until a reported thirty-five thousand were present at one time. As the arrivals increased by hundreds and thousands, the daily mortality was counted by scores and hundreds, and many of the sick were without shelter from the heat of the pitiless sun.