deny themselves everything and devote all their time to the wants of the army, from city belies to factory girls. He adds:

The Southern people have, or rather had, their faults, which have disappeared, and in their place a crop of the most magnificent virtues has sprung up. They are prepared for reverses, and even if defeated before Richmond will retreat and fight elsewhere.

People here are fearfully disappointed about New Orleans. They thought they would have cotton in abundance, but none comes, and the Republicans are obliged to send gold at 7 3/4 or buy exchange at 118 1/2 in place of filling ships with cotton as they expected. Your eyes must be weary, so adieu.

DETROIT, MICH., June 25, 1862.

Colonel W. HOFFMAN, Commissary-General of Prisoners.

COLONEL: In compliance with your order dated Washington, June 12, 1862, requiring me to visit the permanent camps at Albany, Utica, Rochester and Elmira, N. Y., and also the U. S. barracks at Buffalo to ascertain their capacity for quartering troops and to make you a written report thereon accompanied by a general plan of each camp, I have the honor to submit the result of my examination of the camps so specified at Elmira as their condition when visited by me on or near the 19th instant.

First, Camp Rathbun: * This camp is located about one mile to the west of the town on a fine road and is easily accessible at all seasons. Its situation is quite as high as the surrounding country on firm, hard, gravelly soil covered with greensward which does not during the most violent storms become soft, as it gently slopes toward a stream on the south side and is partially drained. There is not in its vicinity either marsh or sanding water nor dense forest or shrubbery which could generate malaria or disease, and the whole country about Elmira is exceedingly healthful and no forms of low fever prevail. The camp is abundantly supplied with fine, pure limestone water from two large wells on the ground. Fuel is plentiful in the vicinity and can be furnished on the ground at $2. 50 peer cord for hard wood and $2 per cord for soft. The ground is shut in one three sides by allow fence of about 4 1/2 feet in height built by nailing slat boards at intervals of about 15 inches to posts set in the ground 10 feet apart. The fourth side is bounded by a running stream of soft water about 25 feet wide used for bathing purposes. Lumber can be purchased suitable for building a high strong fence at 6 1/2 cents per foot and posts 8 feet out of the ground at 16 cents each. The buildings were all built by the Government and both they and the grounds are exclusively under its control, and at present are in the charge of Colonel E. F. Shepard, of the New York volunteers, whose headquarters are at Elmirsent about fifty men, volunteer troops, in their occupancy. The ground is about 500 by 300 yards and although limited in extent is admirably adapted to military purposes. The buildings are all new, wooden, one story in height, with pitched roofs, and have firm floors of plank free from dampness. They are covered with boards placed with the edges together both on the sides and roofs of the buildings, and the joints or seams so formed are again covered by an outer board, making a nearly water-proof covering. They are all well ventilated by square windows

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*See p. 69.

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