Each house contained but two rooms, a lower and an upper, both empty, for the most part without glass windows or even sashes; the spaces between the crooked logs not stopped up; a single fireplace in each house, but not half enough wood to keep a blaze; without tables, benches, or chairs; without cooking utensils; without table, knife, fork, spoon, or plate; often without cup or dish; without blankets, or any clothing but the scantiest summer outfit; without books or papers; without water sufficient for washing, or soap, if we could possibly get water; we were in a sorry plight as the nights grew colder. And if the prospect was bad for us, how much worse for our soldiers across the "dead line," who had no shelter, hardly a scrap of blanket! Every rain made their beds a pool or mass of mire. It is not pleasant, but it is a duty to record some of the shadows of our prison life, "lest we forget." On the open ground outside of what was called the "hospital," October 8th, a sergeant-major was found dead; October 9th, two private soldiers; October 13th, five; October 14th, two; October 16th, eleven; October 17th, seven; October 18th, nine. We could tell how severe the weather had been at night by the number found dead in the morning. Not far from the prison enclosure was an abundance of growing timber. More than once I besought Major Gee to allow our men to go, under guard on parole, to get wood for fires and for barracks. He refused. He said he was intending to build barracks for the prisoners as soon as he could procure lumber. I presume that he was sincere in this. I asked in vain for blankets for the men; for tents, but none came till December, and then but one "Sibley" tent and one "A" tent per hundred prisoners, not enough for one-third of them. We procured water from a deep well on the grounds. The supply was so scanty for the thousands of prisoners that it was always exhausted before sunrise. Soon after we came the Confederates commenced digging two new wells. At their rate of progress we reckoned it would take several months to finish either. My memorandum book shows that the issue of food daily at Salisbury, though sometimes partly withheld, was for each prisoner "one half loaf of soft bread; two, three, four, or five ounces of meat; a gill of boiled rice, and a little salt." I have no doubt that Major Gee meant to deal fairly with us; but he was unprepared for the avalanche that had descended upon him. We are too much in the habit of blaming individual combatants for severities and cruelties that are inherent in the whole business of war, either civil or international, and inseparable from it. Said our Lieut.-Gen. S. M. B. Young at a banquet in Philadelphia, "War is necessarily cruel; it is kill and burn, and burn and kill, and again kill and burn." The truth was more bluntly expressed by the British Rear-Admiral Lord Fisher, now the first sea lord of the British Admiralty: