I began acquainting myself with my new situation and surroundings.  The building into which I had been conducted was an old tobacco factory, called the “Pemberton building,” possibly from an owner of that name, and standing on the corner of what I was told were Fifteenth and Carey streets.  In front it was four stories high; behind but three, owing to the rapid rise of the hill, against which it was built.

It fronted towards the James River and Kanawha Canal, and the James River—­both lying side by side, and only one hundred yards distant, with no intervening buildings.  The front windows afforded a fine view.  To the right front was Libby, with its guards pacing around it on the sidewalk, watching the fifteen hundred officers confined within its walls.  At intervals during each day squads of fresh prisoners could be seen entering its dark mouth, to be registered, and searched, and then marched off to the prison assigned them.  We could see up the James River for a mile or so, to where the long bridges crossing it bounded the view.  Directly in front, across the river, was a flat, sandy plain, said to be General Winfield Scott’s farm, and now used as a proving ground for the guns cast at the Tredegar Iron Works.

The view down the river was very fine.  It extended about twelve miles, to where a gap in the woods seemed to indicate a fort, which we imagined to be Fort Darling, at that time the principal fortification defending the passage of the James.

Between that point and where we were lay the river, in a long, broad mirror-like expanse, like a pretty little inland lake.  Occasionally a busy little tug would bustle up or down, a gunboat move along with noiseless dignity, suggestive of a reserved power, or a schooner beat lazily from one side to the other.  But these were so few as to make even more pronounced the customary idleness that hung over the scene.  The tug’s activity seemed spasmodic and forced—­a sort of protest against the gradually increasing lethargy that reigned upon the bosom of the waters —­the gunboat floated along as if performing a perfunctory duty, and the schooners sailed about as if tired of remaining in one place.  That little stretch of water was all that was left for a cruising ground.  Beyond Fort Darling the Union gunboats lay, and the only vessel that passed the barrier was the occasional flag-of-truce steamer.

The basement of the building was occupied as a store-house for the taxes-in-kind which the Confederate Government collected.  On the first floor were about five hundred men.  On the second floor—­where I was —­were about four hundred men.  These were principally from the First Division, First Corps distinguished by a round red patch on their caps; First Division, Second Corps, marked by a red clover leaf; and the First Division, Third Corps, who wore a red diamond.  They were mainly captured at Gettysburg and Mine Run.  Besides these there was a considerable number from the Eighth Corps, captured at Winchester, and a large infusion of Cavalry-First, Second and Third West Virginia—­taken in Averill’s desperate raid up the Virginia Valley, with the Wytheville Salt Works as an objective.