[112]
In so far as concerns the provisions made for our comfort by the Federal authorities, there is nothing more to relate. The bunks were never supplied with straw. There were no chairs or stools. No basins or towels were given us for purposes of ablution. No plates or cups, no knives or forks or spoons with which to partake of our food. As to ablutions, they were performed during those hours of the day when we had access to the well by water drawn from the pump and poured from canteens into our hands. Most of us were possessors of a pocket knife and a tin cup apiece. Hard crackers served us for plates, and forks and spoons were whittled out of the soft pine wood of the boxes in which our hard tack was served.
Having thus glanced at prison accommodations, let us turn for a moment to the bill of fare. Picture to yourself an immense camp kettle, holding thirty or forty gallons, brought three times a day into our barracks, borne like the famous clusters of Eschol on a pole between two blue coats, whilst behind follows a third soldier, bearing on his shoulders a box some two feet and a half in length. Add at dinner-time a swarthy darkey to close the procession carrying on his head a camp kettle holding six or eight gallons, and you have a complete view of our peripatetic dining-room service as it might have been seen any day during the latter part of our imprisonment. The procession files in through the door of the shed. The four deposit their burdens on the dirt floor. One of them sings out, “I say, Rebs, here's your raytions” (why was it that the Federals always pronounced the word that way?). Then the party retire and leave the viands to be consumed after the most approved Rebel fashion.
Let us draw near and inspect the prison fare. The eager rush for the large camp kettle by all who are fortunate enough to possess a tin cup shows that it contains something to drink. What it is depends on the hour of the day. If it is morning or evening the camp kettle contains coffee (so-called). If the hour is noon, the immense cauldron contains bean soup. But as the same vessel brings coffee in the morning and soup at noon, it would be no very easy matter to decide by the taste which is coffee and which is soup.
The smaller camp kettle, which makes its visit only once a day, contains meat. One day “salt horse” (the army name for the poorer quality of pickled beef, which was sometimes issued as army rations), and the next day mess-pork, usually ancient and
