The soup was made in the following manner: A cabbage consisted of a stalk with a tuft of leaves on the upper end and a bunch of roots on the lower end. The whole was washed clean and chopped up fine with the knife-chisel. The sliced leaves, stem and roots were boiled in eight quarts of water until made as tender as heat could do it. Into the green colored liquid was stirred some flour thickening; the whole was salted and a minced red pepper was added for pungency, while a whole pepper floated on the surface as an advertisement. For a soup dipper a piece of pail hoop was riveted to the side of a condensed milk can, the two rivets being cut from a copper cent with the chisel driven with the shoe hammer. For soup plates a canteen was melted apart and the two halves formed each a plate. On [2]Market Square, down by the swamp, four slender stakes were driven and thereon was placed a pine shake, which formed the soup counter. The soup kettle was covered with a piece of woolen shirt, which kept in the heat. Very early each morning we opened up for business and a line of shivering men in rags and nearly perished from exposure formed as the soup brigade. The price per plate was a five-cent shinplaster of U. S. fractional currency. The poor fellow who had no money must needs go without. As new prisoners ceased to arrive the money supply was soon gathered up and the prison sutler went away and trade was brought to an end. [Illustration: A DREAM] Our last plate of soup was sold to a Maine soldier who paid for it his last five cents. He was nearly naked and incessantly shivered from the cold. The writer found him the following morning, after a night of rain, to which he was exposed, with his knees drawn up to his chin in the instinctive effort to bring the surfaces of his body together for warmth. With difficulty his frame was straightened out for burial. The profit of this business for several weeks gave to our group of six one fairly good meal each day and made possible the survival of those of our number who finally emerged from this awful prison life. CHAPTER IV. A DEARTH OF WATER. If the food supply of Andersonville was bad, the water supply was worse. To understand the situation and to see how little was done to overcome the difficulties involved, and to make the most of the existing facilities for the relief of the suffering, one has to consider the formation of this prison encampment.