The soldier's story of his captivity at Andersonville, Belle Isle, and other Rebel prisons . until I was left in the tree to my own reflec-tions undisturbed. Here I was. I had been withoutsufficient sleep for eight nights and days, almost con-tinually drenched with rain. My hip was badly swollenwith travelling; my feet bleeding, and clothes, by con-stant intercourse with brambles and cane-brake of theswamps, hung in picturesque tatters around me. Chilled,wet, and hungry, I got down from the tree paralyzedwith sitting with my leg over a branch, shook myself,hopped around to get up circulation,
The soldier's story of his captivity at Andersonville, Belle Isle, and other Rebel prisons . until I was left in the tree to my own reflec-tions undisturbed. Here I was. I had been withoutsufficient sleep for eight nights and days, almost con-tinually drenched with rain. My hip was badly swollenwith travelling; my feet bleeding, and clothes, by con-stant intercourse with brambles and cane-brake of theswamps, hung in picturesque tatters around me. Chilled,wet, and hungry, I got down from the tree paralyzedwith sitting with my leg over a branch, shook myself,hopped around to get up circulation, congratulated my-self warmly on being rather smarter than the rest of mycrowd, and then sat down, taking out my note-book,in which I had kept a kind of a log, looked at my map,reckoned up the distance I supposed we had made perday, and the course we had been travelling, and judgedmyself from five to eight miles from the ChattahoocheeRiver, near West Point, below Atlanta. Taking mycourse by the compass, I made a bee-line for the Chat-tahoochee River, which I determined should settle for-. ENCOUNTER WITH THE HOUNDS. 131 ever the question between the dogs and myself. 1afterwards ascertained that I had not varied five mileain my calculations, which was quite a feather, I thought,in my thinking cap. When the dogs came upon us, it was about nineoclock, and when I resumed my journey, it was aboutthree oclock in the afternoon. I had not the slightestidea but that those following the dogs had abandonedfurther pursuit, and thus felt easy. I had not gonemore than two miles before I heard the dogs on mytrack, bellowing and yelling like wolves. In vain Ilooked for a convenient method to get out of thisscrape ; but the trees were pitch-pine, and had nobranches nearer than twenty feet of the ground. Inthis extremity I saw just below me a Virginia fence,which I reached, and wrenching a stake from the fencefor a club, I drew my coat sleeve down over my lefthand, and thrust it out for the first
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1870, booksubjectandersonvilleprison
