NEW YORK, April 23, 1864.

Honorable E. M. STANTON, Secretary of War:

SIR: I take the liberty of inclosing you a copy of a statement published by me of the manner in which prisoners are treated at Belle Isle, and which will be verified by any of the prisoners at Camp Parole, Annapolis. I assure you that the facts stated are strictly true and fall short of rather than exceed the frightful reality.

I remain, with great respect,

W. S. TOLAND,

Late Q. M. Sergeant 83rd N. Y. Vols., or 9th N. Y. State Militia.

[Inclosure.]

PRISON LIFE AT RICHMOND - ITS CRUELTIES.

To the EDITOR OF THE NEW YORK TIMES:

I was taken prisoner by the enemy on the 7th of November last at Morrisville, near Kelly's Ford, on the Rappahannock, and was confined for four months on Belle Isle. On entering Libby Prison we were closely searched by the rebel authorities, and most of the prisoners robbed of whatever money they had, not one cent of which they ever saw again. On the 14th of November about 100 of us were taken from the Libby and marched to Belle Isle, reaching there about 9 a. m. The prisoners collected on the bank on all sides of the inclosure to meet us, and such a collection of woe-begone, miserable, starving men I never beheld. We were marched inside of the gate and turned loose like so many cattle, to find a resting place where we could; shelter there was none.

The whole inclosure does not comprise more than four acres, and within it more than 8,000 prisoners were at one time confined. The only shelter was tents, generally worn out and leaky; and during the whole winter hundreds, and sometimes more than a thousand men, were obliged to sleep in the open air on the ground and in ditches. The coldest winter days, the thermometer down to 5 or 8, from 200 to 500 men were invariably sent over from Libby Prison, where they had been all winter under shelter and had sold their clothing to procure food. Some walked the weary night, some laid down and died, some went raving mad. Forty men were brought out one morning to the surgeon frozen in different ways, two of them dead.

The medical attendance was a farce, and when all chance of living was past the patients were carried over to Richmond to die. Those who died on the island were buried without attendance of friends or ceremony of any kind. Their bodies sometimes lay for a week exposed to the weather, trampled on by dogs and hogs. Each prisoner was allowed one-quarter of a loaf of corn bread in the morning and one-third of a loaf at night, with half a pint of black beans, the latter wormy and unfit to eat; the bread half baked and calculated to produce irritation and sickness instead of sustaining life.

Not one-fourth of the rations sent by the United States in November ever reached the prisoners, and no sanitary stores were ever delivered on Belle Isle; only 200 out of 4,000 express boxes were delivered there, and the night before we were sent away the guards of the Libby were selling us crackers from our own express boxes at $5 per pound. Men would eagerly gather up bones, crumbs, potato parings, and any article of food however loathsome, killing and eating dogs to satisfy their hunger. The Western army stripped our men of almost every article of clothing and sent them nearly naked to Richmond; but I have never