During the first few months of our sojourn at Andersonville, the Confederates allowed us a sufficient quantity of food to support life. We were also comparatively free and unconfined, were out of doors, had room to walk about, and could see the shady forest. This was a great relaxation from, and improvement upon, hard walls. The rebels also--as they issued us raw rations--allowed us to get wood to cook with, and for the purpose of making shelter. For a short time, then,--and it was a short time, indeed, compared to the long term of our imprisonment,--we were happier than we had been during all of our previous captivity. But no man was ever happy long in rebel prisons, and the period of our bliss was of but short duration. Not only did men die of the scurvy as fast as the snow melts in spring, but other misfortunes befell us. Or rather, these last came in the shape of Southern barbarities; but although they were barbarities in those who inflicted them, they were serious misfortunes to the Yankee prisoners. It seemed, no sooner had the spring campaigns opened, and men came pouring into the prison as though the Northern army had been captured in full, than the rebel authorities prohibited going out for wood, so that those who came in after that date could not get out for material to make shelter with. Hence, it seemed thereafter a race between the old prisoners and the new to see who would die the soonest; the new prisoners, having no shelter, dying from exposure and other severities, and the old prisoners, having shelter, dying from the scurvy.