So lonely 'twas that God himself
Scarce seemed there to be.




CHAPTER XVI.

WAKING UP IN ANDERSONVILLE--SOME DESCRIPTION OF THE PLACE--OUR FIRST
MAIL--BUILDING SHELTER--GEN. WINDER--HIMSELF AND LINEAGE.

We roused up promptly with the dawn to take a survey of our new abiding
place. We found ourselves in an immense pen, about one thousand feet
long by eight hundred wide, as a young surveyor--a member of the
Thirty-fourth Ohio--informed us after he had paced it off. He estimated
that it contained about sixteen acres. The walls were formed by pine
logs twenty-five feet long, from two to three feet in diameter, hewn
square, set into the ground to a depth of five feet, and placed so close
together as to leave no crack through which the country outside could be
seen. There being five feet of the logs in the ground, the wall was, of
course, twenty feet high. This manner of enclosure was in some respects
superior to a wall of masonry. It was equally unscalable, and much more
difficult to undermine or batter down.

The pen was longest due north and south. It was divided in the center
by a creek about a yard wide and ten inches deep, running from west to
east. On each side of this was a quaking bog of slimy ooze one hundred
and fifty feet wide, and so yielding that one attempting to walk upon it
would sink to the waist. From this swamp the sand-hills sloped north and
south to the stockade. All the trees inside the stockade, save two, had