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The cemetery covers forty-seven acres, and is nearly square in form. It occupies a tract somewhat larger than the old field, a portion of the timber on the north and the east having also been enclosed. The whitewashed picket fence is completed on three sides; on the eastern side is a rough board fence, which will soon, however, give way to a picket like that on the other sides. In direction, the cemetery is west of north from the stockade; in distance, it is about one third of a mile from the northern line thereof. The cemetery is laid out in four nearly equal sections, by cross-roads intersecting near the centre of the enclosure. The north and south road is partly graded; the east and west road is merely staked out, and is not likely to be soon finished. The entrance is by a plain gate about midway in the southern line-Inside the fence, on the right of the gate, on the transverse section of a cross, is the inscription: --

NATIONAL CEMETERY.

ANDERSONVILLE.

On the left of the gate, inscribed upon a similar neat white board, is this impressive and appropriate inscription: --

"On Fame's eternal camping-ground Their silent tents are spread, And Glory guards with solemn round The bivouac of the dead."

On the eastern side of the road from this gate, that is, in the southeastern quarter of the cemetery, are three sections of graves, separated by broad alleys running east and west. Each of these sections contains about fourteen hundred graves, in long rows of over a hundred each. On the western side of the road, that is, in the southwestern quarter, are
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two similar sections, separated also by an alley, and having about the same number of graves in the long rows. Where the first of these alleys crosses the main road, on the right and on the left, are these inscriptions: --

"Whether in the prison drear Or in the battle's van, The fittest place for man to die Is where he dies for man." "The hopes, the fears, the blood, the tears, That marked the battle strife, Are now all crowned by victory That saved the nation's life."

Where the second alley crosses are similarly set up, on the right and on the left, the following memorial passages: --

"A thousand battle-fields have drank The blood of warriors brave, And countless homes are dark and drear In the land they died to save." "Then shall the dust Return to the earth as it was; And the spirit shall return Unto God who gave it."

In the northwestern quarter, in the extreme corner of the cemetery, are the graves of the guard, one hundred and fifteen in number, from the 1st, 2d, 3d, and 4th Georgia Reserves. In the northeastern quarter is a solid section of over five thousand graves, in rows of about two hundred each; and here stands the following motto: --

"Through all Rebellion's horrors Bright shines our nation's fame: Our gallant soldiers, perishing, Have won a deathless name."

In the centre of the enclosure, at the crossing of the roads, is the forty-feet pine flag-staff, erected in July, by the burial party which came out from Washington with Miss Clara Barton, of Massachusetts. Nearer to this than any other
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are the graves of the six prisoners hung July 11, 1864, by their companions, for rascalities within the stockade. [1]

These 12,882 soldiers' and sailors' graves are each marked with a plain white head-board thirty inches high and ten inches wide, inscribed on the inside with name, regiment, company, rank, and date of death. At first the bodies were buried so far apart that there is often more than a foot of space between the edges of the head-boards; but in the large section in the northeastern corner, where those who died last winter and spring are buried, the space is never more than four inches and in many cases is scarcely two. The first recorded death was February 27, 1864, the last April 28, 1865, giving an average of about nine hundred and twenty deaths per month for fourteen months. In the months of August and September, 1864, the average of deaths appears, however, to have been nearly five hundred per week; and there were many occasions when the number exceeded one hundred per day.

Across the Sweet Water Creek, in the oaks, about a hundred rods distant, and south of east in direction from the hospital stockade, was the pest-house. It simply consisted of three log cabins, each about ten by fifteen feet in size. One of the number has been torn down, but the other two remain, and one of them is occupied by a "cracker" family.