It may be easily computed how many documents of this description would be likely to meet his eye.
Two or three times a week he rides into camp with a sturdy knave behind him, at a respectful distance—makes the run of one or two streets, and is gone, and I presume sits down over a glass of brandy and water, and indites a most satisfactory report of the condition of the "rebs," for the perusal of his superior officer, or plies some credulous spinster with specious fictions about the comfort, abundance, and general desirableness of Yankee prisons. The Major bears a bad reputation here, in the matter of money; all of which, I presume, arises from the unreasonableness of the "rebs," who are not aware that they have no rights which Yankees are bound to respect.
Friday, June 17th.—A salute of thirteen guns heralded this morning the arrival of General Augur, who commands the department of Washington. About twelve M., the general, with a few other officials, made the tour of camp, performing, in the prevailing perfunctory manner, the official duty of inspection.
Nothing on earth can possibly be more ridiculous and absurd than the great majority of official inspections of all sorts; but this "banged Bannagher." General Augur did not speak to a prisoner, enter a tent, peep into a mess-room, or, so far as I saw, take a single step to inform himself how the pen was managed.
Weymouth probably fixed up a satisfactory report, however, when the general's brief exhibition of his new uniform to the appalled "rebs" was over.
Visited all my comrades to-day, and, with one exception, found them all suffering like myself from exhausting diarrhœa, induced by the poisonous water.
In his narrative of prison life at Elmira, after speaking in high terms of the kindly feeling towards the prisoners shown by Major Colt, the commandant of the prison, Mr. Keiley writes as follows:
In the executive duties of his office, Major Colt was assisted by fifteen or twenty officers, and as many non-commissioned officers, chiefly of the militia or the veteran reserves. Among them were some characters which are worth a paragraph.
There was a long-nosed, long-faced, long-jawed, long-bearded, long-bodied, long-legged, endless-footed, and long-skirted curiosity, yclept Captain Peck, ostensibly engaged in taking charge of certain companies of "rebs," but really employed in turning a penny by huckstering the various products of prisoners' skill—an occupation very profitable to Peck, but generally unsatisfactory, in a pecuniary way, to the "rebs." Many of them have told me of the impossibility of getting their just dues from the prying, round-shouldered captain, who had a snarl and an oath for every one out of whom he was not, at that instant, making money.
Another rarity of the pen was Lieutenant John McC., a braw
