Poor Bohannan shook hands with his friends and messmates and was taken to the hospital, under the Lower Potomac Room. A few days afterward, a cart backed up to the hospital door, and we could see a form wrapped in a blanket placed therein. The cart drove off and Bohannan's name was dropped from the list of the living.

Since my Libby experience I have never attempted to trace out the origin of a rumor, no matter how reliable or wild it might seem. There was a very general belief that the rumors that daily excited the prisoners originated with the wilder spirits in the Upper Potomac Room, but I will not vouch for this. There were frequent rumors that Lee's army was in revolt, but these found no believers. "Exchange! An immediate exchange!" When this was shouted through the prison every one was credulous, for it was the one thing which every heart craved. Our dreams by night and our thoughts by day were about exchange; no wonder, then, that we were all so ready to believe that our yearnings were to be gratified and our prayers answered. But unlike the false cry of "Wolf! Wolf!" there never came a time, except to a favored few, when the alarm proved true.

Some men-they were principally the married officers who had wives and little ones at home-would talk about nothing but exchange. They were said to have "exchange on the brain." and I recall, with a feeling of pity, how intense the desire became with these men when the supplies from the North were cut off and the forms grew thinner and the eyes more hollow in the bitter cold months of early '64. I think now that these constant rumors and the ceaseless talk about exchange did the men good. Could they have known that there was to be no more exchange and that the majority must face rags, filth, and famine for another year and a half, I am quite sure that many more of the brave fellows would have gone down to prison graves.

The desire for news was intense. Now and then we succeeded in getting copies of the Richmond papers, generally the Inquirer and Whig, both strongly Confederate and very hopeful of their cause, but we could read between the lines and tell pretty well the true state of affairs. The editorial articles were pleas for furloughed volunteers to return or exhortations to those who owed "tax in kind" to settle up with the Government. But while thus exposing the weakness of their own side, these papers basely tried to comfort their readers with pen

pictures of the "desolation, destitution, and discontent" prevailing throughout the North. The editor of the Whig said in one number that he had had an interview with a lady who had just come through under flag-of-truce. He said in effect: "This lady is intelligent and trustworthy. She assures us that if Lincoln does not disband his army and acknowledge the Confederacy before Spring the people will swarm to Washington and drive him from the White House, if they do not hang him. As an illustration of the stagnation existing in New-York City, this lady showed us a bunch of grass which she had plucked in one of the principal streets."

Now and then these papers would have something to say about Castle Thunder, Libby, the Pemberton Building, or Belle Isle; in the last two our enlisted men were confined. The Pemberton Building was on the south side of Casey Street, about fifty yards to the east of Libby, so that we could see the poor fellows without being able to communicate with them.

Every morning just about daylight an old colored man who sold papers would come down past the prison, and reserving his strength for this special occasion, he would shout out the news to the best of his knowledge and belief, and although he seldom. proved to be a trustworthy contraband, every prisoner eagerly listened for his coming, even though much of his matter appeared to be stereotyped and much battered by long usage. I can hear him still-I think we decided to call him "Jake"-I can hear old Jake's voice now, though it must be long since hushed in the grave, calling out, as it did when it roused us into wakefulness in those dark, cold mornings:

"Gerrait news! All de news fom de front! Gerrait news fom de Potomac! Gerrait battle yesserday! No side won! Gerrait raiden. bime Yanks in de mountains! Hunreds kilt!' and so on, till his voice died out in the direction of sunrise.

Ordinary notepaper was selling in Richmond at this time for 25 cents a sheet-when sold to the prisoners it came as high as 30 cents, envelopes to match. The authorities allowed us to write whenever a flag-of-truce boat was ready to go down the river, but the amount was limited to one page of notepaper, and every letter had to remain open for inspection-the latter a proper provision in the circumstances. the writing of letters was nothing to the receiving of them.

But

Naggs, Adjt. Naggs of Detroit. Mich., was the man who acted, if not by selection, by universal consent, as our Postmastsr. He gathered up the letters that were to be sent off and turned them over to the Confederates. And to him was given the mail that had come in under flag of truce for the homesick prisoners. To see Naggs standing on the head of a barrel, with a swarm of ragged, dirty, and eager-faced men round him, while he called out the names of the fortunate, was something not to be forgotten soon. The man who got a letter from home would start off, try to find a quiet spot, and devour the letter very fast, and then take it in very slowly to get all the good of it. After which he would read it over for days, nor cease when he knew it by heart and it came to pieces at the folds.

The men would watch Naggs till the last letter in the bag was drawn out, and then the ones who had not been favored, who had not received the expected letter from wife, mother, sweetheart, or friend, would turn sadly away, and for a long time after they would feel colder, hungrier, and more forsaken than before the mail came. As the Confederates read all our letters before they sent them off, so they read every letter that came from the North before they delivered it. Northern papers, everything indeed but actual letters from friends, were confiscated.

It must not be imagined that the prisoners sat down and moped. There were 1,300 men in Libby at this time. Officers, all intelligent, some even scholarly, and every man of them plucky and patriotic. The simplest of them knew that to give way to the blues meant death, and that to keep the mind and body as active as possible was not only duty but a necessity.

The men who carved bones into distorted crucifixes and doubtful napkin rings were not as one in ten, so that other means must be adopted to employ the minds of the majority who had not "bone on the brain." We had debating societies in every room, and I have heard some as excellent speeches there as I ever listened to outside of Libby, and some more broadly humorous than any I ever heard anywhere; indeed, they would have been impossible outside of that place and that audience.

We had chess and checkers; some men would lie down on their faces for hours at a time playing the latter game with white and black

Occurrence.

bone buttons and on a board marked off on the floor with a knife, but the aristocratic game of chess was played with some dignity and it aroused more interest. Match games between the different rooms, which meant between men from the different armies, were of constant The men from the Lower Potomac Room, or, rather, their best players, would formally challenge the best players of the Upper Chicamauga, who would as formally accept. The players always remained in their own rooms, and lines of couriers were established to shout the moves from one to the other. Back and forth along this animated telegraph line the orders would go for hours at a time, and, when at length one or the other was checkmated, such a cheer would go up from the victors and their partisans as would make the rafters of the old building ring again, while the guards would halt and ask each other: "What in thunder is up with the Yankees now?"

T

SAKAKAWEA, THE "BIRD WOMAN”

HIS remarkable character in Northwest history was taken captive as a child from her own tribe, the Shoshones, by a war band of the Hidatsa or Grosventres, then living on the Missouri river. She lived for many years at one of the Hidatsa villages, near the present town of Stanton, North Dakota, on the Knife river, a tributory of the Missouri. This place was known as the Five Villages, from the fact that there were in the vicinity three Hidatsa and two Mandan villages. She became the wife of a Frenchman, Charbonneau, who was at this time living with the Hidatsa as a free trader. When the Lewis and Clark expedition reached the Five villages in 1804, they wintered there and became acquainted with Charbonneau and his wife. In the spring they hired him to act as guide and interpreter for their trip west to the Pacific. His wife with her infant boy accompanied her husband on the expedition. Her quick wit and resourcefulness at critical places made her invaluable to the expedition. Her chief service was performed, however, when the expedition arrived at the territory of the Shoshones. Sakakawea still recalled enough of her native speech to act as interpreter and by good fortune she met her brother, who had become one of the leading men of her tribe. She was thus able to obtain peaceable entrance for the whites into this region which these Indians had jealously guarded from invasion, and to secure guides and much needed supplies of food. Through the friendly intervention of this powerful and warlike tribe the Lewis and Clark expedition was able to make the dangerous and difficult crossing of the Rocky Mountains, and to reach the mouth of the Columbia river in safety.

On account of these important national services which she rendered, the women and children of North Dakota, under the direction of the State Federation of Women's clubs, raised sufficient money to have made a beautiful bronze statue of Sakakawea, and the statue was unveiled with appropriate ceremonies at the State Capitol grounds, where it now stands. It is the work of the talented young sculptor, Leonard Crunelle of Chicago. In preparation for his task he visited the Fort Berthold reservation in North Dakota, and made a number of excellent photographic studies of a young Hidatsa woman. After