XIV.

To the south-east, and at the distance of a stone's throw from the prison, were placed the few miserable and decayed tents which were to serve as hospitals, in mockery of science and humanity.

To-day the traces of this useless philanthropy have passed away, but the results are fearfully shown in the field to the northward, where thirteen thousand soldiers sleep in death,--the harvest of one short year! "Here," said one of the surgeons to the inquirer, "death might be predicted with almost absolute certainty."

Here came a medical officer of the highest rank in the Rebel army, and one of the most eminent _savans_ of the South, to study the physiology and philosophy of starvation. The notes of that fearful clinic are preserved, and may some future day startle the scientific world with their clearness, their candor, their positive evidence of the cause of death. Thus the scalpel silences the argument, the reasoning of sophistry.

That there was scarcity of medicines, and all of those delicacies known to the cultivated or luxurious taste, there can be no doubt. Neither the country, nor the desires of the people, produced or favored their production; but let us thank Heaven there is proof that there were some among the medical officers in whom the virtues of the heart were not entirely reversed, who did protest against the needless deficiencies and the system of treatment.

The sufferings here were less poignant than in the pen; for nature always comes to the relief of dying mortals, and tempers the pangs of dissolution.

Food was demanded, but it was wanting. Shelter and the pure air of heaven were prayed for by gasping men; even these, too, were wanting. Yet close by rose the gigantic pines, of the growth of centuries, standing in all the grandeur of the primeval forests, and offering to the disordered vision and senses of the dying wretches grateful shades, cool bowers, or the images of home, and the forms of the well-loved, as the faint and sinking traveller beholds them in the far-off mirage of the desert.