Note 77 — Chapter XXIV · CHRISTIANITY AND BARBARISM.

"Under the most favorable circumstances and best possible management the supply of water would have been insufficient for half the number of persons who had to use it. The existing arrangements must have aggravated the evil to the utmost extent. The sole establishments for cooking and baking were placed on the bank of the stream immediately above and between the two inner lines of the pallisades. The grease and refuse from them were found adhering to the banks at the time of our visit. The guards, to the number of three thousand six hundred, were principally encamped on the upper part of the stream, and when the heavy rains washed down the hillsides covered with thirty thousand human beings, and the outlet below failed to discharge the flood which backed and filled the valley, the water must have become so foul and loathsome that every statement I have seen of its offensiveness must fall short of the reality; and yet within rifle-shot of the prison flowed a stream, fifteen feet wide and three feet deep, of pure, delicious water. Had the prison been placed so as to include a section of 'Sweet Water Creek,' the inmates might have drank and bathed to their hearts' content."[77]