Now, if the reader can realize the scene I have attempted to describe, I shall be satisfied. If he can, in his mind's eye, see hundreds of emaciated, haggard, and half-naked men lying about on the bare ground of an inclosed field (which is divided into two sections by a swamp, in the middle of which runs a little ditch of water), the largest number lying around the swamp and at the edge of the rising ground; if he can see these poor fellows in the morning, after a rainy night, almost buried beneath the sand and dirt which the rain has washed down from the hillside upon them, too exhausted and weak to arise,--many that never will arise again in this life, and are now breathing their last; not a soul near to give them a drink or speak to them--I say, if the reader realizes this scene in his own mind, he will catch a faint glimpse of the actual fact as it existed. Those that are still able to get up, and remain upon their feet long enough to be counted for rations, do so when the time comes, and then lie down again in the burning sun, or, if able, pass the day in wandering wearily about the camp; the only interruption being the drawing of rations. These, when drawn, are devoured with the voraciousness of a tiger. The constant exposure to the fierce rays of a Southern sun has burned their hands and feet in great scars and blisters. Covered with sand and dirt from head to foot, their poor, shrunken bodies and cadaverous, horror-striking faces are enough to soften the heart of a Caligula or a Nero; but no pity or relief comes. Day after day they must scorch in the sun; night after night must their starved bodies shiver with cold, while the pitiless rain must chill and drench with its unceasing torrents the last spark of vitality out of them. The only relief that comes is in a speedy and inevitable death. No one can last long under these conditions, and the time required to kill a man was well ascertained and wonderfully short. To endure three such terrible hardships as gradual starvation, intolerable heat, and shivering cold, day after day and night after night in unremitting succession, man was never made. How I wish every man and woman in the North could understand, and realize in their minds and hearts, the awful condition of our men at Andersonville, as in the case of the shelterless, new, and scurvy-infected old prisoners. "It _might_ frae monie a blunder free 'em, And foolish notion." It might soften their hearts to the suffering they now see around them. CHAPTER III. THE CHICKAMAUGA MEN.--PERSONAL EXPERIENCES AND SUFFERINGS.--TRADE.--MERCHANDISING AT ANDERSONVILLE.--THE PLYMOUTH MEN.--A GODSEND TO THE "OLD RESIDENTS."--"POPULAR PRICES."