Shortly after dark we were turned inside the Stockade.  Being the first that had entered, there was quite a quantity of wood—­the offal from the timber used in constructing the Stockade—­lying on the ground.  The night was chilly one we soon had a number of fires blazing.  Green pitch pine, when burned, gives off a peculiar, pungent odor, which is never forgotten by one who has once smelled it.  I first became acquainted with it on entering Andersonville, and to this day it is the most powerful remembrance I can have of the opening of that dreadful Iliad of woes.  On my journey to Washington of late years the locomotives are invariably fed with pitch pine as we near the Capital, and as the well-remembered smell reaches me, I grow sick at heart with the flood of saddening recollections indissolubly associated with it.

As our fires blazed up the clinging, penetrating fumes diffused themselves everywhere.  The night was as cool as the one when we arrived at Andersonville, the earth, meagerly sodded with sparse, hard, wiry grass, was the same; the same piney breezes blew in from the surrounding trees, the same dismal owls hooted at us; the same mournful whip-poor-will lamented, God knows what, in the gathering twilight.  What we both felt in the gloomy recesses of downcast hearts Andrews expressed as he turned to me with: 

“My God, Mc, this looks like Andersonville all over again.”

A cupful of corn meal was issued to each of us.  I hunted up some water.  Andrews made a stiff dough, and spread it about half an inch thick on the back of our chessboard.  He propped this up before the fire, and when the surface was neatly browned over, slipped it off the board and turned it over to brown the other side similarly.  This done, we divided it carefully between us, swallowed it in silence, spread our old overcoat on the ground, tucked chess-board, can, and spoon under far enough to be out of the reach of thieves, adjusted the thin blanket so as to get the most possible warmth out of it, crawled in close together, and went to sleep.  This, thank Heaven, we could do; we could still sleep, and Nature had some opportunity to repair the waste of the day.  We slept, and forgot where we were.

CHAPTER LIX.

Our new quarters at camp Lawton—­building A hut—­an exceptional commandant—­he is a good man, but will take bribes—­rations.

In the morning we took a survey of our new quarters, and found that we were in a Stockade resembling very much in construction and dimensions that at Andersonville.  The principal difference was that the upright logs were in their rough state, whereas they were hewed at Andersonville, and the brook running through the camp was not bordered by a swamp, but had clean, firm banks.