riends, who took it by turns day and night. I have a
sorrowful recollection of sitting up one night to wait on Captain Scates
of Westmoreland county, and to administer the medicines prescribed by
the doctors. The ward was silent save for occasional groans, the lights
were burning dimly, and there was no companion watching with me. About
midnight the emaciated sufferer died, passing away as quietly as when
one falls into healthy slumbers. I closed his eyes and remained near the
body until the grateful dawn of morning. Guarded by soldiers we went to
the cemetery without the walls, and committed the body to the ground,
far away from his family and native land.

Nearly all the men confined on Johnson's Island were officers, of every
rank from lieutenant to major-general, and numbering about twenty-six
hundred. They represented all parts of the South and nearly every
occupation, whether manual or professional. They were men of
refinement,--ingenious, daring; and they were enclosed in this prison
because it was secured no less by an armed guard than by the surrounding
water.

Every man was trying to devise some method of escape, but only a few
succeeded, not only because the difficulty was great, but also because
there were spies among us. Three men tunneled out from Block No. 1, only
to find themselves surrounded by Yankee soldiers. Captain Cole, a portly
man, became jammed in the passage, and was somewhat like Abe Lincoln's
ox that was caught and held on a fence, unable to kick one way or gore
the other. The incident furnished the theme of another minstrel song,
with the chorus, "If you belong to Gideon's band."

I had a secret agreement with Captain John Stakes, of the 40th Virginia,
that if either saw a way of escape he would let the other know. Many a
time with longing eyes we looked upon a sloop that used to tie up for
the night at a wharf near the island. If we only could get to it! And so
we began a tunnel under block No. 9, but finding that our labors were
discovered by a spy, we were constrained to desist.

Two men filed saw teeth on the backs of case knives, and on a rainy,
dark, and windy night they crawled down a ditch to the wall on the bay
shore, and cut their way out; but they were captured and brought back.

There were a few successful escapes. One man, smarter than the rest of
us, when we went to a vessel to fill our ticks with straw concealed
himself under what remained in the hold and was carried back