credible persons, and this is but a part of their sufferings; so that the excuse made by the enemy that the prisoners were emaciated and died by contagious sickness, which no one could prevent, is futile. It requires no great sagacity to know that crowding people together without fresh air, and feeding, or rather starving them in such a manner as the prisoners have been, must unavoidably produce a contagion. Nor is it a want of candor to suppose that many of our enemies saw with pleasure this contagion, which might have been so easily prevented, among the prisoners who could not be persuaded to enter the service.” THE CASE OF CAPTAIN BIRDSALL Soon after the battle of Long Island Captain Birdsall, a Whig officer, made a successful attempt to release an American vessel laden with flour for the army, which had been captured in the Sound by the British. Captain Birdsall offered, if the undertaking was approved of by his superior officer, to superintend the enterprise himself. The proposal was accepted, when Birdsall, with a few picked men, made the experiment, and succeeded in sending the vessel to her original destination. But he and one of his men fell into the hands of the enemy. He was sent to the Provost Jail under surveillance of “that monster in human shape, the infamous Cunningham.” He requested the use of pen, ink, and paper, for the purpose of acquainting his family of his situation. On being refused he made a reply which drew from the keeper some opprobious epithets, accompanied by a thrust from his sword, which penetrated the shoulder of his victim, and caused the blood to flow freely. Being locked up alone in a filthy apartment, and denied any assistance whatever, he was obliged to dress the wound with his own linen, and then to endure, in solitude and misery, every indignity which the malice of the Provost Master urged him to inflict upon a _damned rebel_, who, he declared, ought to be hung. “After several months of confinement and starvation he was exchanged.” Two Whig gentlemen of Long Island were imprisoned in the Provost Prison some time in the year 1777. Two English Quakers named Jacob Watson and Robert Murray at last procured their release. Their names were George Townsend and John Kirk. Kirk caught the smallpox while in prison. He was sent home in a covered wagon. His wife met him at the door, and tenderly nursed him through the disorder. He recovered in due time, but she and her infant daughter died of the malady. There were hundreds of such cases: indeed throughout the war contagion was carried into every part of the country by soldiers and former prisoners. In some instances the British were accused of selling inoculated clothing to the prisoners. Let us hope that some, at least, of these reports are unfounded.