Next morning we reentered the freight cars. A twelve hours' ride brought us at nine o'clock, Wednesday evening, October 5th, to our destination, Salisbury, North Carolina. As the "Four Hundred" passed into the dark enclosure, we were greeted with the cry, "Fresh fish! Fresh fish!" which in those days announced the arrival of a new lot of prisoners. We field officers were quartered that night in a brick building near the entrance, where we passed an hour of horrors. We were attacked by what appeared to be an organized gang of desperadoes, made up of thieves, robbers, Yankee deserters, rebel deserters, and villains generally, maddened by hunger, or bent on plunder, who rejoiced in the euphonious appellation of _Muggers_! We had been warned against them by kindly disposed guards, and were not wholly unprepared. They attacked us with clubs, fists, and knives, but were repeatedly driven off, pitched headlong downstairs. "_Muggers!_" Salisbury prison, then commonly called "Salisbury penitentiary," was in the general form of a right-angled triangle with base of thirty or forty rods, perpendicular eighty or ninety. In a row parallel to the base and four or five rods from it were four empty log houses with a space of about four rods between each two. These, a story and a half high, had formerly been negro quarters. On each side of the great triangle was a stout tight board fence twelve or fifteen feet high. Some two or three feet from the top of this, but out of our sight because on the other side, there was evidently a board walk, on which sentinels, four or five rods apart, perpetually paced their beats, each being able to see the whole inside of the enclosure. At each angle of the base was a shotted field-piece pointing through the narrow opening. We could see that behind each cannon there was a number of muskets stacked and vigilant soldiers watching every movement inside. Close to the fence outside there were three camps of Confederates, variously estimated to contain from seven hundred to two thousand in all. The number of Union officers in prison after our arrival was about three hundred and twenty; the number of non-commissioned officers and privates was suddenly increased from about two thousand to some eight thousand. Among these were non-combatants, refugees, lighthouse keepers, and other government employees. Albert D. Richardson, then well-known as a correspondent of the New York _Tribune_, whose romantic marriage to Abby Sage by Henry Ward Beecher and whose tragic death created a sensation in the newspaper world, had been held as a prisoner there for several months. He told us he had found Salisbury a comfortable place. It immediately ceased to be such.