CHAPTER IX.
BRANS OR PEAS--INSUFFICIENCY OF DARKY TESTIMONY--A GUARD KILLS A PRISONER--PRISONERS TEAZE THE GUARDS--DESPERATE OUTBREAK.
But, to return to the rations--a topic which, with escape or exchange, were to be the absorbing ones for us for the next fifteen months.

There was now issued to every two men a loaf of coarse bread--made of a mixture of flour and meal--and about the size and shape of an ordinary brick.
This half loaf was accompanied, while our Government was allowed to furnish rations, with a small piece of corned beef.

Occasionally we got a sweet potato, or a half-pint or such a matter of soup made from a coarse, but nutritious, bean or pea, called variously "nigger-pea," "stock-pea," or "cow-pea." This, by the way, became a fruitful bone of contention during our stay in the South.

One strong party among us maintained that it was a bean, because it was shaped like one, and brown, which they claimed no pea ever was.

The other party held that it was a pea because its various names all agreed in describing it as a pea, and because it was so full of bugs--none being entirely free from insects, and some having as many as twelve by actual count--within its shell.