nd ourselves running northward through a pine barren
country that resembled somewhat that in Georgia, except that the pine was
short-leaved, there was more oak and other hard woods, and the vegetation
generally assumed a more Northern look. We had been put into close box
cars, with guards at the doors and on top. During the night quite a
number of the boys, who had fabricated little saws out of case knives and
fragments of hoop iron, cut holes through the bottoms of the cars,
through which they dropped to the ground and escaped, but were mostly
recaptured after several days. There was no hole cut in our car, and so
Andrews and I staid in.

Just at dusk we came to the insignificant village of Florence, the
junction of the road leading from Charleston to Cheraw with that running
from Wilmington to Kingsville. It was about one hundred and twenty miles
from Charleston, and the same distance from Wilmington. As our train ran
through a cut near the junction a darky stood by the track gazing at us
curiously. When the train had nearly passed him he started to run up the
bank. In the imperfect light the guards mistook him for one of us who
had jumped from the train. They all fired, and the unlucky negro fell,
pierced by a score of bullets.

That night we camped in the open field. When morning came we saw, a few
hundred yards from us, a Stockade of rough logs, with guards stationed
around it. It was another prison pen. They were just bringing the dead
out, and two men were tossing the bodies up into the four-horse wagon
which hauled them away for burial. The men were going about their
business as coolly as if loading slaughtered hogs. 'One of them would
catch the body by the feet, and the other by the arms. They would give
it a swing--"One, two, three," and up it would go into the wagon. This
filled heaping full with corpses, a negro mounted the wheel horse,
grasped the lines, and shouted to his animals:

"Now, walk off on your tails, boys."

The horses strained, the wagon moved, and its load of what were once
gallant, devoted soldiers, was carted off to nameless graves. This was a
part of the daily morning routine.

As we stood looking at the sickeningly familiar architecture of the
prison pen, a Seventh Indianian near me said, in tones of wearisome
disgust:

"Well, this Southern Confederacy is the d---dest country to stand logs on
end on God Almighty's footstool."

CHAPTER LXVIII.

FIRST DAYS A