CHAPTER LXXI.

DECEMBER--RATIONS OF WOOD AND FOOD GROW LESS DAILY--UNCERTAINTY AS TO THE
MORTALITY AT FLORENCE--EVEN THE GOVERNMENT'S STATISTICS ARE VERY
DEFICIENT--CARE FOB THE SICK.

The rations of wood grew smaller as the weather grew colder, until at
last they settled down to a piece about the size of a kitchen rolling-pin
per day for each man. This had to serve for all purposes--cooking, as
well as warming. We split the rations up into slips about the size of a
carpenter's lead pencil, and used them parsimoniously, never building a
fire so big that it could not be covered with a half-peck measure.
We hovered closely over this--covering it, in fact, with our hands and
bodies, so that not a particle of heat was lost. Remembering the
Indian's sage remark, "That the white man built a big fire and sat away
off from it; the Indian made a little fire and got up close to it," we
let nothing in the way of caloric be wasted by distance. The pitch-pine
produced great quantities of soot, which, in cold and rainy days, when we
hung over the fires all the time, blackened our faces until we were
beyond the recognition of intimate friends.

There was the same economy of fuel in cooking. Less than half as much as
is contained in a penny bunch of kindling was made to suffice in
preparing our daily meal. If we cooked mush we elevated our little can
an inch from the ground upon a chunk of clay, and piled the little sticks
around it so carefully that none should burn without yielding all its
heat to the vessel, and not one more was burned than absolutely
necessary. If we baked bread we spread the dough upon our chessboard,
and propped it up before the little fire-place, and used every particle