Starving men were driven to all sorts of shifts for want of these.

Pantaloons or coats were pulled off and their sleeves or legs used to draw a mess's meal in.
Boots were common vessels for carrying water, and when the feet of these gave way the legs were ingeniously closed up with pine pegs, so as to form rude leathern buckets.

Men whose pocket knives had escaped the search at the gates made very ingenious little tubs and buckets, and these devices enabled us to get along after a fashion.
After our meal was disposed of, we held a council on the situation.
Though we had been sadly disappointed in not being exchanged, it seemed that on the whole our condition had been bettered.

This first ration was a decided improvement on those of the Pemberton building; we had left the snow and ice behind at Richmond--or rather at some place between Raleigh, N.C., and Columbia, S.C .-- and the air here, though chill, was not nipping, but bracing.

It looked as if we would have a plenty of wood for shelter and fuel, it was certainly better to have sixteen acres to roam over than the stiffing confines of a building; and, still better, it seemed as if there would be plenty of opportunities to get beyond the stockade, and attempt a journey through the woods to that blissful land -- "Our lines." We settled down to make the best of things.