In this enclosure, during a period of twelve months, from five thousand to
thirty-six thousand human beings ate, slept, and drank, whilst the piles
of filth were constantly accumulating, and the germs of infection silently
at work. There was no regularity in the arrangement of the interior. Men
collected in groups in the day time, and they lay in rows, like swine, at
night.
The stream, which with little ingenuity could have been turned to a
blessing for the prison, was allowed to be obstructed by the heaps of
grime; and enlarging its area, it assisted in forming the extensive
quagmires, which were several acres in extent. So little care was
observed for the comfort or the health of the prisoners, that all the
washings of the bakery, all the filth of the out-houses of the workmen,
were allowed to pass down and mingle with the current of the stream only
thirty feet above the point of entrance into the stockade. The traveller
can observe to-day that this malicious act of refined cruelty, or fatal
error in hygiene, was really perpetrated.
Besides this, the drains of the camp and the town above emptied themselves
into this stream which supplied the prison with water.