31st. Four hundred more crossed from Barrett's prison for here this morning.

It is dreadfully cold on the Island this morning,

It is not strange that life under these circumstances should become weary.

It is a sad thing to have established on the pages of history.

These poor defenseless soldiers not only to be deprived of their arms which were so much their pride to bear and their glory to wield,

but also deprived of every personal comfort and convenience and compelled to lie down exposed to the frowning elements of nature, and the still more pitiless abuse of mankind.

It were scarcely possible to conceive of more persistent wholesale misery, deliberately heaped upon men, than agents of Southern malice have poured upon their Northern kindred.

The tortures of the inquisition were horrible and we shrink with horror as we peruse the history of that period.

Those terrible pages telling us how the flames rose from a bundle of sticks, and curled above the martyrs as they were tied to the stake, have a power to stir our souls within us to their utmost depth,

but who will say they are more dreadful than the slow burnings which eat out the vitals, leaving the tenement of clay a mere wreck before the spirit quits its frail abode, more to be feared than the lightening which prevents the play of life, more sure than the anaconda's grasp or the tiger's embrace.

There are some of these things which have to be taken as the natural consequences of war, but some of them are not.

We know that the misfortunes and chances of war are privations, exposures and suffering, which is the inevitable lot of those who engage in the service, but we seldom hear our willing soldiers complain of these;

it is the inhuman and inexcusable treatment they receive as prisoners.

They bear their misfortunes bravely and patriotically, blaming only the conduct of our merciless enemies.

Later in the history of this war, the people will become acquainted with the treatment of Union soldiers in the various Southern prisons.