filled the hot sand under our
feet, and voracious troops would climb up on one like streams of ants
swarming up a tree. We began to have a full comprehension of the third
plague with which the Lord visited the Egyptians:

And the Lord said unto Moses, Say unto Aaron, Stretch out thy rod,
and smite the dust of the land, that it may become lice through all
the land of Egypt.

And they did so; for Aaron stretched out his hand with his rod, and
smote the dust of the earth, and it became lice in man and in beast;
all the dust of the land became lice throughout all the land of
Egypt.

The total number of deaths in April, according to the official report,
was five hundred and seventy-six, or an average of over nineteen a day.
There was an average of five thousand prisoner's in the pen during all
but the last few days of the month, when the number was increased by the
arrival of the captured garrison of Plymouth. This would make the loss
over eleven per cent., and so worse than decimation. At that rate we
should all have died in about eight months. We could have gone through a
sharp campaign lasting those thirty days and not lost so great a
proportion of our forces. The British had about as many men as were in
the Stockade at the battle of New Orleans, yet their loss in killed fell
much short of the deaths in the pen in April.

A makeshift of a hospital was established in the northeastern corner of
the Stockade. A portion of the ground was divided from the rest of the
prison by a railing, a few tent flies were stretched, and in these the
long leaves of the pine were made into apologies for beds of about the
goodness of the straw on which a Northern farmer beds his stock. The
sick taken there were no better off than if they had staid with their
comrades.

What they needed to bring about their recovery was clean clothing,
nutritious food, shelter and freedom from the tortures of the lice.
They obtained none of these. Save a few decoctions of roots, there were
no medicines; the sick were fed the same coarse corn meal that brought
about the malignant dysentery from which they all suffered; they wore and
slept in the same vermin-infested clothes, and there could be but one
result: the official records show that seventy-six per cent. of those
taken to the hospitals died there.

The establishment of the hospital was specially unfortunate for my little
squad. The ground required for it