On Sunday morning we arrived in the beautiful city of Augusta, Georgia. Our train was sidetracked on a principal thoroughfare whose borders were embowered in luxuriant foliage which screened attractive homes, whence the church bells were calling the summer-dressed occupants. On the sidewalk opposite from the train groups of the people loitered to gaze upon the grimy, famished prisoners who swarmed upon the tops of the freight cars and formed a sweltering crowd within. Several ladies deferred their church-going, re-entered their houses, emerged with baskets filled with sandwiches, crossed the street to the side of the train and, overcoming the objections of the guards, handed out the precious food to the grateful men, who responded with their most courteous thanks. This little piece of genuine chivalry was the one bright spot in the torturing journey, and was matched by the sensibilities of some Southern ladies, who later viewing the interior of Andersonville from the stockade platform, turned away their faces weeping. [Illustration: Ground Plan of Andersonville Stockade. Description: Fig. 1, Keeper's House; 2, "P. Spring"; 3, Nat'l Monument; 4, Purchased Property; 5, Stockade; 6, Outer Stockade; 7, Deadline; 8, Forts and Batteries; 9, Main Fort; 10, [1]Gallows; 11, Magazine; 12, Capt. Wirtz' Headquarters; 13, To Cemetery; 14, Wells and Tunnels; 15, Dead House; 16, Guard Camp; 17, Road to Station; 18, Creek; 19, North Gate; 20, South Gate; 21, Flag Pole.] [Illustration: THE ANDERSONVILLE PRISON PEN This view looks westward. Providence Spring was located just below the north gate, close to the stockade X.] CHAPTER II. AN INSIDE VIEW OF A CONFEDERATE PRISON. At the time of our incarceration in Andersonville, the crisis of the war of the rebellion was reached. General Grant was fighting the great battles of the Wilderness in Virginia; the investment of Petersburg was about to begin, and General Lee was resisting the impact of the Federal forces with unsurpassed skill and heroism. General Sherman was also hastening his preparations to penetrate the vitals of the Confederacy by his famous "March to the Sea." Skirmishes by the contending forces were of daily occurrence, and frequently battles were fought that now loom large in history. To bury the dead was not difficult; but the care of the wounded was a grave concern to both armies. An affair of still greater magnitude was the gathering up of the captured officers and soldiers, the transporting of them hundreds of miles, and the placing of them in prisons for safe keeping. The Confederate authorities adopted a simple and logical plan. Foodstuffs for their armies could not be gathered in war-swept Virginia, nor to any great extent from the border States. In Georgia and Alabama, in parts of the Carolinas, Mississippi and Louisiana faithful slave labor produced an abundant supply of rice, corn and bacon, sweet potatoes and beans.