The loathsome maggot flies swarmed about the bakery, and dropped into the
trough where the dough was being mixed, so that it was rare to get a
ration of bread not contaminated with a few of them.

It was not long until the bakery became inadequate to supply bread for
all the prisoners. Then great iron kettles were set, and mush was issued
to a number of detachments, instead of bread. There was not so much
cleanliness and care in preparing this as a farmer shows in cooking food
for stock. A deep wagon-bed would be shoveled full of the smoking paste,
which was then hailed inside and issued out to the detachments, the
latter receiving it on blankets, pieces of shelter tents, or, lacking
even these, upon the bare sand.

As still more prisoners came in, neither bread nor mush could be
furnished them, and a part of the detachments received their rations in
meal. Earnest solicitation at length resulted in having occasional
scanty issues of wood to cook this with. My detachment was allowed to
choose which it would take--bread, mush or meal. It took the latter.

Cooking the meal was the topic of daily interest. There were three ways
of doing it: Bread, mush and "dumplings." In the latter the meal was
dampened until it would hold together, and was rolled into little balls,
the size of marbles, which were then boiled. The bread was the most
satisfactory and nourishing; the mush the bulkiest--it made a bigger
show, but did not stay with one so long. The dumplings held an
intermediate position--the water in which they were boiled becoming a
sort of a broth that helped to stay the stomach. We received no salt,
as a rule. No one knows the intense longing for this, when one goes
without it for a while. When, after a privation of weeks we would get a