"Myself and servant alone built one of these in an afternoon, and I spent in it some of the coldest weather we have had this winter very comfortably. The 'dug-out' principle enters into the construction of nearly all our little cabins; and, like the foxes, we have holes, and literally live in the 'caves and dens of the earth.' The officers generally build their quarters in the side of a bank, and have them logged up nicely, and they are very comfortable except in a long storm. Sometimes our frail canvas covering sways terribly in the wintry blasts, and I have often laid down to sleep more than half expecting to find my house gone when I awoke. Still our little holes in the ground are a hundredfold better than no shelter at all, and far preferable to those in which the soldier 'sleeps the sleep that knows no waking.' Some of the men who have the faculty of making anything and everything with an axe put up quite large substantial log shanties, with two or three tiers of berths, as in a steamboat. Some have quite a neat, homelike appearance, and are furnished with fanciful little tables and shelves according to the tastes and wants of the occupants. Others are dismal and dirty in the extreme, and are mere dens. Nothing shows the character of the men more thoroughly than the little huts they inhabit. A few are too indolent to build themselves anything, and are still living in their shelter tents. But over the heads of us all is merely a canvas roof, which will often leak, and it is a very common thing to see puddles of water, or a muddy floor, in our winter quarters.