em from the inhabitants; and these, swayed by the boastful
temper common to mobs, had been readily led to despise the efforts of
the enemy and to trust implicitly in the power of their defenses.
General Lovell, commanding the department, had gone down to the forts
the evening before the attack, and was still there when the United
States fleet was breaking its way through; he was, in fact, on board the
little steamer, the pursuit of which lured the Varuna into the isolation
where she met her fate. The news of the successful forcing of the
exterior and principal defenses thus reached the city soon after it was
effected; and at the same time Lovell, satisfied from the first that if
the forts were passed the town was lost, prepared at once to evacuate
it, removing all the Government property. This in itself was a service
of great difficulty. New Orleans is almost surrounded by water or marsh;
the only exit was to the northward by a narrow strip of dry land, not
over three quarters of a mile wide, along the river bank, by which
passed the railroad to Jackson, in the State of Mississippi. As has
already been said, Lovell had by this road been quietly removing army
rations for some time, but had abstained from trying to carry off any
noticeable articles by which his apprehensions would be betrayed to the
populace. The latter, roused from its slumber of security with such
appalling suddenness, gave way to an outburst of panic and fury; which
was the less controllable because so very large a proportion of the
better and stronger element among the men had gone forth to swell the
ranks of the Confederate army. As in a revolution in a South American
city, the street doors were closed by the tradesmen upon the property in
their stores; but without began a scene of mad destruction, which has
since been forcibly portrayed by one, then but a lad of fourteen years,
who witnessed the sight.

Far down the stream, and throughout their ascent, the ships were passing
through the wreckage thus made. Cotton bales, cotton-laden ships and
steamers on fire, and working implements of every kind such as are used
in ship-yards, were continually encountered. On the piers of the levees,
where were huge piles of hogsheads of sugar and molasses, a mob,
composed of the scum of the city, men and women, broke and smashed
without restraint. Toward noon of the 25th, as the fleet drew round the
bend where the Crescent City first appears in sight, the confusion