was made of unsifted corn-meal,
ground "cobs and all." Pieces several inches in length of cobs
unground were sometimes contained in it. It always seemed wholesome,
though moist, almost watery. Its dimensions were a little less than
7 inches long, 3 or 4 wide, and 3 thick. I managed to bring home a
loaf, and we were amazed at the shrinkage to a quarter of its
original size. It had become very hard. We broke it in two, and
found inside what appeared to be a dishcloth!

_Meat._ Forty-three times. I estimated the weight at from 2 to 5 or
6 ounces. In it sometimes were hides, brains, heads, tails, jaws
with teeth, lights, livers, kidneys, intestines, and nameless
portions of the animal economy.

_Soup._ Sixty-two times; viz., bean soup forty-seven times; cabbage
nine times; gruel six. It was the thinnest decoction of small black
beans, the slightest infusion of cabbage, or the most attenuated
gruel of corn-cob meal, that a poetic imagination ever dignified
with the name of _soup_!

_Potatoes._ Seven times. Seldom was one over an inch in diameter.

_Salt fish._ Five times. They call it "hake." It was good. "Hunger
the best sauce."

_Sorghum syrup._ Three times. It was known as "corn-stalk molasses."
It was not bad.

Nothing else was given us for food by the Confederates at Danville. The
rations appeared to deteriorate and diminish as the winter advanced. My
diary shows that in the fifty-three days after Christmas we received
meat only three times.

Manifestly such supplies are insufficient to sustain life very long. By
purchase from the rebel sutler who occasionally visited us, or by
surreptitious trading with the guards, we might make additions to our
scanty allowance. I recollect that two dollars of irredeemable treasury
notes would buy a gill of rice or beans or corn, a turnip, onion,
parsnip, or small pickled cucumber!

The Confederate cooking needed to be supplemented. Here the cylinder
coal-stoves were made useful. The tops of them were often covered with
toasting corn bread. Tin pails and iron kettles of various capacities,
from a pint to several quarts, suspended from the top by wooden hooks a
foot or two in length, each vessel resting against the hot stove and
containing rice, beans, Indian corn, dried apple, crust coffee, or other
delicacy potable or edible slowly preparing, made the whole look like a
big black chandelier w