One of the commonest of sights was to see men whose hands and feet were simply rotting off.  The nights were frequently so cold that ice a quarter of an inch thick formed on the water.  The naked frames of starving men were poorly calculated to withstand this frosty rigor, and thousands had their extremities so badly frozen as to destroy the life in those parts, and induce a rotting of the tissues by a dry gangrene.  The rotted flesh frequently remained in its place for a long time —­a loathsome but painless mass, that gradually sloughed off, leaving the sinews that passed through it to stand out like shining, white cords.

While this was in some respects less terrible than the hospital gangrene at Andersonville, it was more generally diffused, and dreadful to the last degree.  The Rebel Surgeons at Florence did not follow the habit of those at Andersonville, and try to check the disease by wholesale amputation, but simply let it run its course, and thousands finally carried their putrefied limbs through our lines, when the Confederacy broke up in the Spring, to be treated by our Surgeons.

I had been in prison but a little while when a voice called out from a hole in the ground, as I was passing: 

“S-a-y, Sergeant!  Won’t you please take these shears and cut my toes off?”

“What?” said I, in amazement, stopping in front of the dugout.

“Just take these shears, won’t you, and cut my toes off?” answered the inmate, an Indiana infantryman—­holding up a pair of dull shears in his hand, and elevating a foot for me to look at.

I examined the latter carefully.  All the flesh of the toes, except little pads at the ends, had rotted off, leaving the bones as clean as if scraped.  The little tendons still remained, and held the bones to their places, but this seemed to hurt the rest of the feet and annoy the man.

“You’d better let one of the Rebel doctors see this,” I said, after finishing my survey, “before you conclude to have them off.  May be they can be saved.”

“No; d——­d if I’m going to have any of them Rebel butchers fooling around me.  I’d die first, and then I wouldn’t,” was the reply.  “You can do it better than they can.  It’s just a little snip.  Just try it.”

“I don’t like to,” I replied.  “I might lame you for life, and make you lots of trouble.”

“O, bother! what business is that of yours?  They’re my toes, and I want ’em off.  They hurt me so I can’t sleep.  Come, now, take the shears and cut ’em off.”

I yielded, and taking the shears, snipped one tendon after another, close to the feet, and in a few seconds had the whole ten toes lying in a heap at the bottom of the dug-out.  I picked them up and handed them to their owner, who gazed at them, complacently, and remarked: 

“Well, I’m darned glad they’re off.  I won’t be bothered with corns any more, I flatter myself.”

CHAPTER LXX.