No amount of familiarity with it, no increase of intimacy with our offensive surroundings, could lessen the disgust at the polluted water.

As I have said previously, before the stream entered the Stockade, it was rendered too filthy for any use by the contaminations from the camps of the guards, situated about a half-mile above.
Immediately on entering the Stockade the contamination became terrible.
The oozy seep at the bottom of the hillsides drained directly into it all the mass of filth from a population of thirty-three thousand.

Imagine the condition of an open sewer, passing through the heart of a city of that many people, and receiving all the offensive product of so dense a gathering into a shallow, sluggish stream, a yard wide and five inches deep, and heated by the burning rays of the sun in the thirty-second degree of latitude.

Imagine, if one can, without becoming sick at the stomach, all of these people having to wash in and drink of this foul flow.
There is not a scintilla of exaggeration in this statement.

That it is within the exact truth is demonstrable by the testimony of any man--Rebel or Union--who ever saw the inside of the Stockade at Andersonville.