reduced the aggregate number at the time of our arrival to about eleven
thousand, which gave more room to all, but was still not one-twentieth of
the space which that number of men should have had.

No shelter, nor material for constructing any, was furnished. The ground
was rather thickly wooded, and covered with undergrowth, when the
Stockade was built, and certainly no bit of soil was ever so thoroughly
cleared as this was. The trees and brush were cut down and worked up
into hut building materials by the same slow and laborious process that I
have described as employed in building our huts at Millen.

Then the stumps were attacked for fuel, and with such persistent
thoroughness that after some weeks there was certainly not enough woody
material left in that whole fifteen acres of ground to kindle a small
kitchen fire. The men would begin work on the stump of a good sized
tree, and chip and split it off painfully and slowly until they had
followed it to the extremity of the tap root ten or fifteen feet below
the surface. The lateral roots would be followed with equal
determination, and trenches thirty feet long, and two or three feet deep
were dug with case-knives and half-canteens, to get a root as thick as
one's wrist. The roots of shrubs and vines were followed up and gathered
with similar industry. The cold weather and the scanty issues of wood
forced men to do this.

The huts constructed were as various as the materials and the tastes of
the builders. Those who were fortunate enough to get plenty of timber
built such cabins as I have described at Millen. Those who had less eked
out their materials in various ways. Most frequently all that a squad of
three or four could get would be a few slender poles and some brush.
They would dig a hole in the ground two feet deep and large enough for