Prisoners at Andersonville had to provide their own shelters, improvising leaky tents and lean-tos from sticks and pieces of clothing, while many had no shelter at all. Protection from rain, dew, and broiling sun became a matter of life or death, as exposure aggravated illnesses and infections and contributed to the soaring mortality rate. W.B. Smith of the 14th Illinois Infantry wrote on October 11, 1864, that reaching the spring required picking a path through a wilderness of low mud huts and tattered tents made from clay balls, old army blankets, fragments of old clothing, and oilcloths. An August 1864 photograph of the hillside showed a rough sea of improvised shelters that the prisoners called shebangs, and overcrowding created a prison within a prison, confining the men by other living bodies as well as by stockade walls.