CHAPTER LXXI.
DECEMBER--RATIONS OF WOOD AND FOOD GROW LESS DAILY--UNCERTAINTY AS TO THE MORTALITY AT FLORENCE--EVEN THE GOVERNMENT'S STATISTICS ARE VERY DEFICIENT--CARE FOB THE SICK.
The rations of wood grew smaller as the weather grew colder, until at last they settled down to a piece about the size of a kitchen rolling-pin per day for each man.

This had to serve for all purposes--cooking, as well as warming.

We split the rations up into slips about the size of a carpenter's lead pencil, and used them parsimoniously, never building a fire so big that it could not be covered with a half-peck measure.
We hovered closely over this--covering it, in fact, with our hands and bodies, so that not a particle of heat was lost.

Remembering the Indian's sage remark, "That the white man built a big fire and sat away off from it; the Indian made a little fire and got up close to it," we let nothing in the way of caloric be wasted by distance.

The pitch-pine produced great quantities of soot, which, in cold and rainy days, when we hung over the fires all the time, blackened our faces until we were beyond the recognition of intimate friends.
There was the same economy of fuel in cooking.