ighbor from crawling through the cracks of
a tight board fence by simply tying a knot in their tails--roam the
woods, and supply all the meat used.
Andrews used to insist that some of the hogs which we saw were so thin
that the connection between their fore and hindquarters was only a single
thickness of skin, with hair on both sides--but then Andrews sometimes
seemed to me to have a tendency to exaggerate.
The swine certainly did have proportions that strongly resembled those of
the animals which children cut out of cardboard. They were like the
geometrical definition of a superfice--all length and breadth, and no
thickness. A ham from them would look like a palm-leaf fan.
I never ceased to marvel at the delicate adjustment of the development of
animal life to the soil in these lean sections of Georgia. The poor land
would not maintain anything but lank, lazy men, with few wants, and none
but lank, lazy men, with few wants, sought a maintenance from it. I may
have tangled up cause and effect, in this proposition, but if so, the
reader can disentangle them at his leisure.
I was not astonished to learn that it took five hundred square miles of
Pierce County land to maintain two thousand "crackers," even as poorly as
they lived. I should want fully that much of it to support one
fair-sized Northern family as it should be.
After leaving the cars we were marched off into the pine woods, by the
side of a considerable stream, and told that this was to be our camp.
A heavy guard was placed around us, and a number of pieces of artillery
mounted where they would command the camp.
We started in to make ourselves comfortable, as at Millen, by building
shanties. The prisoners we left behind followed us, and we soon had our
old crowd of five or six thousand, who had been our companions at
Savannah and Millers, again with us. The place looked very favorable for
escape. We knew we were still near the sea coast--really not more than
forty miles away--and we felt that if we could once get there we should
be safe. Andrews and I meditated plans of escape, and toiled away at our
cabin.
About a week after our arrival we were startled by an order for the one
thousand of us who had first arrived to get ready to move out. In a few
minutes we were taken outside the guard line, massed close together, and
informed in a few words by a Rebel officer that we were about to be taken
back to Savannah for exchange.
The announc
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