There appears to have been but one kitchen for this vast assemblage, and
that strangely situated--far in rear of the outer palisade, away from
water-course or spring. The soil to-day does not present traces of a
much-travelled road from its doorway to the main gate, distant about one
third of a mile by the route taken. Consider the enormous weight of
provisions which should have passed over this road when the prison
contained more than twenty thousand men. This kitchen was a plain
one-story shed, built of rough boards, one hundred feet in length, and
less than fifty feet in width. It contained in the interior two
medium-sized ranges, and four boilers of fifty gallons' capacity each. The
capacity indicated does not by far equal the cooking apparatus which is
required and furnished to the Lincoln and Harewood Hospitals, of
Washington, for twelve hundred men.
It is the opinion of the writer, who is familiar with the amount of
cooking apparatus required by large hospitals and camps, that this
kitchen, with its implements, could not, in the course of twenty-four
hours, by constant relays of industrious workmen, have furnished cooked
rations to more than five thousand men. There may have been other
arrangements for cooking in the open air; but there are no longer any
traces of such operations, nor has the writer any evidence that such was
the case.
[Illustration]