"Besides these things they suffered severely for want of
provisions. The commissioners pretended to allow a half a pound of
bread, and four ounces of pork per day; but of this pittance they were
much cut short. What was given them for three days was not enough for
one day and, in some instances, they went for three days without a
single mouthful of food of any kind. They were pinched to such an
extent that some on board the ships would pick up and eat the salt
that happened to be scattered there; others gathered up the bran which
the light horse wasted, and eat it, mixed with dirt and filth as it
was.
"Nor was this all, both the bread and pork which they did allow them
was extremely bad. For the bread, some of it was made out of the bran
which they brought over to feed their light horse, and the rest of it
was so muddy, and the pork so damnified, being so soaked in bilge
water during the transportation from Europe, that they were not fit to
be eaten by human creatures, and when they were eaten were very
unwholesome. Such bread and pork as they would not pretend to give to
their own countrymen they gave to our poor sick dying prisoners.
"Nor were they in this doleful condition allowed a sufficiency of
water. One would have thought that water was so cheap and plentiful an
element, that they would not have grudged them that. But there are, it
seems, no bounds to their cruelty.
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