On the third day, I think, we reached St. Louis, and were marched through the streets, in column of fours, to a Ladies’ College, or some such building. On the way, we were not a little consoled to find that we had sympathisers, especially among the ladies, in the city. They crowded the sidewalks, and smiled kindly, and sometimes cheered, and waved dainty white handkerchiefs at us. How beautiful and clean they appeared, as compared with our filthy selves! While at the college, they besieged the building, and threw fruit and cakes at the struggling crowds in the windows, and in many ways assisted to lighten the gloom on our spirits. Four days later, we were embarked on railroad cars, and taken across the State of Illinois to Camp Douglas, on the outskirts of Chicago. Our prison-pen was a square and spacious enclosure, like a bleak cattle-yard, walled high with planking, on the top of which, at every sixty yards or so, were sentry-boxes. About fifty feet from its base, and running parallel with it, was a line of lime-wash. That was the ‘dead-line’ and any prisoner who crossed it was liable to be shot. One end of the enclosure contained the offices of the authorities. Colonel James A. Milligan, one of the Irish Brigade (killed at Winchester, July 24th, 1864) commanded the camp. Mr. Shipman, a citizen of Chicago, acted as chief commissary. At the other end, at quite three hundred yards distance, were the buildings allotted to the prisoners, huge, barn-like structures of planking, each about two hundred and fifty feet by forty, and capable of accommodating between two hundred and three hundred men. There may have been about twenty of these structures, about thirty feet apart, and standing in two rows; and I estimated that there were enough prisoners within it to have formed a strong brigade--say about three thousand men--when we arrived. I remember, by the regimental badges which they wore on their caps and hats, that they belonged to the three arms of the service, and that almost every Southern State was represented. They were clad in home-made butternut and grey. To whatever it was due, the appearance of the prisoners startled me. The Southerners’ uniforms were never pretty, but when rotten, and ragged, and swarming with vermin, they heightened the disreputability of their wearers; and, if anything was needed to increase our dejection after taking sweeping glances at the arid mud-soil of the great yard, the butternut and grey clothes, the sight of ash-coloured faces, and of the sickly and emaciated condition of our unhappy friends, were well calculated to do so.