The poor land would not maintain anything but lank, lazy men, with few wants, and none but lank, lazy men, with few wants, sought a maintenance from it.

I may have tangled up cause and effect, in this proposition, but if so, the reader can disentangle them at his leisure.
I was not astonished to learn that it took five hundred square miles of Pierce County land to maintain two thousand "crackers," even as poorly as they lived.

I should want fully that much of it to support one fair-sized Northern family as it should be.
After leaving the cars we were marched off into the pine woods, by the side of a considerable stream, and told that this was to be our camp.
A heavy guard was placed around us, and a number of pieces of artillery mounted where they would command the camp.
We started in to make ourselves comfortable, as at Millen, by building shanties.

The prisoners we left behind followed us, and we soon had our old crowd of five or six thousand, who had been our companions at Savannah and Millers, again with us.

The place looked very favorable for escape.