luggish,
filthy stream, and the marshy ground on either side of it, are doing a
fearful work: every morning a wagon drawn by four mules is driven in, and
the corpses--scattered here and there to the number of from eighty-five to
a hundred--gathered up, tossed into it like sticks of wood, taken away and
thrown promiscuously into a hole dug for the purpose, and earth shoveled
over them.

There are corpses lying about now; there are men, slowly breathing out
their last of life, with no dying bed, no pillow save the hard ground, no
mother, wife, sister, daughter near, to weep over, or to comfort them as
they enter the dark valley.

Others there are, wasted and worn till scarce more than living skeletons,
creeping about on hands and feet, lying or sitting in every attitude of
despair and suffering; a dull, hopeless misery in their sunken eyes, a
pathetic patience fit to touch a heart of stone; while others still have
grown frantic with that terrible pain, the hunger gnawing at their very
vitals, and go staggering about, wildly raving in their helpless agony.

And on them all the scorching sun beats pitilessly down. Hard, cruel fate!
scorched with heat, with the cool shelter of the pine forests on every
side; perishing with hunger in a land of plenty.

In one corner, but a yard or so within the dead line, a group of officers
in the Federal uniform--evidently men of culture and refinement, spite of
their hatless and shoeless condition, ragged, soiled raiment, unkempt
hair, and unshaven faces--sit on the ground, like their comrades in
misfortune, sweltering in the sun.

"When will this end?" sighs one. "I'd sooner die a hundred deaths on the
battle-field."

"Ah, who wouldn't?" exclaims another; "to starve, roast, and freeze by
turns for one's country, requires more patriotism by far than to march up
to the cannon's mouth, or charge up hill under a galling fire of
musketry."

"True indeed, Jones," returns a fair-haired, blue-eyed young man, with
face so gaunt and haggard with famine that his own mother would scarcely
have recognized him, and distinguished from the rest by a ball and chain
attached to wrist and ankle; "and yet we bear it for her sake and for
Freedom's. Who of us regrets that we did not stay at home in inglorious
ease, and leave our grand old ship of state to founder and go to pieces
amid the rocks of secession?"

"None of us, Allison! No, no! the Union forever!" returned several voices
in chorus.

"Ha