Very frequently pork and beef barrels were secured to serve this purpose, being put one above another, and now and then a lively hurrah would run through the camp when one of these was discovered on fire. It is hardly necessary to remark that not all these chimneys were monuments of success. Too often the draught was down instead of up, and the inside of some stockades resembled smoke-houses. Still, it was “all in the three years,” as the boys used to say. It was all the same to the average soldier, who rarely saw fit to tear down and build anew more scientifically. The smoke of his camp-fires in warm weather was an excellent preparative for the smoking fireplace of winter-quarters. Many of these huts were deemed incomplete until a sign appeared over the door. Here and there some one would make an attempt at having a door-plate of wood suitably inscribed; but the more common sight was a sign over the entrance bearing such inscriptions, rudely cut or marked with charcoal, as: “Parker House,” “Hole in the Wall,” “Mose Pearson’s,” “Astor House,” “Willard’s Hotel,” “Five Points,” and other titles equally absurd, expressing in this ridiculous way the vagaries of the inmates. [Illustration: A CHIMNEY ON FIRE.] The last kind of shelter I shall mention as used in the field, but not the least in importance, was the _Bomb-proofs_ used by both Union and Rebel armies in the war. Probably there were more of these erected in the vicinity of Petersburg and Richmond than in all the rest of the South combined, if I except Vicksburg, as here the opposing armies established themselves—the one in defence, the other in siege of the two cities. These bomb-proofs were built just inside the fortifications. Their walls were made of logs heavily banked with earth and having a door or wider opening on the side away from the enemy. The roof was also made of heavy logs covered with several feet of earth. [Illustration: A COMMON BOMB-PROOF.] The interior of these structures varied in size with the number that occupied them. Some were built on the surface of the ground, to keep them drier and more comfortable; others were dug down after the manner of a cellar kitchen; but all of them were at best damp and unwholesome habitations—even where fireplaces were introduced, which they were in cool weather. For these reasons they were occupied only when the enemy was engaged in sending over his iron compliments in the shape of mortar-shells. For all other hostile missiles the breastworks were ample protection, and under their walls the men stretched their half-shelters and passed most of their time in the summer and fall of 1864, when their lot was cast in that part of the lines nearest the enemy in front of Petersburg.