being placed, immediately proceed to clear the sites of their
respective encampments, and wagons are set to work to bring in logs with
which huts may be constructed. In about a week thousands of diminutive
log houses arise, roofed with the shelter tents of the soldiers, or,
when the occupants have sufficient handicraft ability, with rough
shingles. Shelters are erected, as far as possible, for the animals,
generally being nothing more than frameworks covered with pine brush. If
there are lumber mills in the vicinity, they are set to work, and boards
sawed for floors to the tents and hospitals. The adjacent forests now
begin to disappear rapidly, leaving nothing but an unsightly array of
stumps; for a regiment is entitled to about two hundred cords of wood
per month as fuel, and in a well-wooded country, where the men can
conveniently cut for themselves, much more is consumed. Every regiment
requires, therefore, about eight or ten acres of woodland per month. An
army of a hundred regiments will, in the course of a winter, denude
several square miles of trees, so that (in the proportion which woodland
generally bears to that which is cleared) a space of country equal to a
county may be stripped of its timber. The men, having made themselves
comfortable, are now called on to form working parties, and put the
roads leading to the depots and the various camps in good order,
generally corduroying them, so as to be passable during the winter;
bridges are made over streams, drainage perfected, &c. In a few weeks,
the chief portion of the labor of preparing a winter's camp is
completed.

The sanitary regulations for camps are very stringent and comprehensive.
The suggestions of experience as to the details by which the diseases
incident to camp life can be prevented, are embodied in orders, and it
is the duty of the medical officers and of the inspectors to see that
they are observed. For instance, it is not permitted to have the floors
of the huts lower than the external ground, and the men are required to
keep pine boughs between their blankets and the earth. The method in
which a camp shall be drained, and the offal disposed of, is prescribed.
The cleanliness of the men is enforced. A rigorous system of reports
upon these and many other particulars exists, so that negligences are
corrected.

The military occupations which relieve the monotony of camp life are
drilling and picketing. It is in the latter that officers and men