Our base of supplies was Acquia Creek, about fifteen miles in our rear, towards Washington, and thither I had to frequently go for our subsistence. The trains to this place were daily laden with the sick and wounded on their way to the great hospitals in and around Washington. And some of the sights that I saw in connection with the removal of our poor, maimed, sick and dying soldiers, shortly after the terrible battle, would be too painful to relate. I do not mean that they were not as well treated and as kindly cared for as was practicable under the circumstances, but that from their great numbers, the inadequate means for handling them, and the distance over which they had to be transported in crowded box cars and filthy steamboats before much could be done for them, it was impossible but that their sufferings in many cases should be of the most aggravated character. Our situation while in front of Fredericksburg was anything but comfortable. The men lived in all sorts of rudely constructed cabins, bough-houses and even subterranean huts, having no tents save the miserable misnamed shelter tents, which were used only as roofs for the conglomerate of structures which their ingenuity had devised. The fire-places were made of logs cemented and plastered with mud, and the chimneys mainly with empty barrels set on top of each other, (the heads being first knocked out,) and they also cemented together and plastered with mud. This Virginia mud, when thoroughly dried by the fire, is almost as hard as common brick. The water which we had to use and drink here was simply execrable. I don't think it was so bad as that in the Cove Basin, but it had a very similar appearance. Each little spring and rivulet were eagerly sought and constantly used by continual streams of soldiers, necessarily keeping them in a perturbed and more or less filthy condition; and besides, it was impossible that some portion of the vast amount of offal accumulating from this great army should not find its way into these sources of our water supply. This was specially so when, as frequently happened, several regiments were encamped on the same little stream. Much sickness was caused during our uncomfortable stay here by this detestable water.