I have before mentioned the scarcity of grease in the South, and the difficulty of supplying the railroads with lubricants.  Apparently there had been no oil on the Atlantic & Gulf since the beginning of the war, and the screeches of the dry axles revolving in the worn-out boxes were agonizing.  Some thing would break on the cars or blow out on the engine every few miles, necessitating a long stop for repairs.  Then there was no supply of fuel along the line.  When the engine ran out of wood it would halt, and a couple of negros riding on the tender would assail a panel of fence or a fallen tree with their axes, and after an hour or such matter of hard chopping, would pile sufficient wood upon the tender to enable us to renew our journey.

Frequently the engine stopped as if from sheer fatigue or inanition.  The Rebel officers tried to get us to assist it up the grade by dismounting and pushing behind.  We respectfully, but firmly, declined.  We were gentlemen of leisure, we said, and decidedly averse to manual labor; we had been invited on this excursion by Mr. Jeff.  Davis and his friends, who set themselves up as our entertainers, and it would be a gross breach of hospitality to reflect upon our hosts by working our passage.  If this was insisted upon, we should certainly not visit them again.  Besides, it made no difference to us whether the train got along or not.  We were not losing anything by the delay; we were not anxious to go anywhere.  One part of the Southern Confederacy was just as good as another to us.  So not a finger could they persuade any of us to raise to help along the journey.

The country we were traversing was sterile and poor—­worse even than that in the neighborhood of Andersonville.  Farms and farmhouses were scarce, and of towns there were none.  Not even a collection of houses big enough to justify a blacksmith shop or a store appeared along the whole route.  But few fields of any kind were seen, and nowhere was there a farm which gave evidence of a determined effort on the part of its occupants to till the soil and to improve their condition.

When the train stopped for wood, or for repairs, or from exhaustion, we were allowed to descend from the cars and stretch our numbed limbs.  It did us good in other ways, too.  It seemed almost happiness to be outside of those cursed Stockades, to rest our eyes by looking away through the woods, and seeing birds and animals that were free.  They must be happy, because to us to be free once more was the summit of earthly happiness.

There was a chance, too, to pick up something green to eat, and we were famishing for this.  The scurvy still lingered in our systems, and we were hungry for an antidote.  A plant grew rather plentifully along the track that looked very much as I imagine a palm leaf fan does in its green state.  The leaf was not so large as an ordinary palm leaf fan, and came directly out of the ground.  The natives