st Porter
himself arrived off the city in his flag-ship, and the two admirals had
an interview on the scene of their former exploits. The same afternoon
Farragut sailed in the Hartford for the North, to enjoy a brief respite
from his labors during the enervating autumn months of the Gulf climate.
Though now sixty-two years old, he retained an extraordinary amount of
vitality, and of energy both physical and moral; but nevertheless at his
age the anxieties and exposure he had to undergo tell, and had drawn
from him, soon after his return from above Port Hudson, the expressive
words, "I am growing old fast, and need rest." On the 10th of August the
flag-ship anchored in New York, after a passage of nine days.

The admiral remained in the North until the first of the following year.
His own ship, and her powerful sisters, the Richmond and Brooklyn, were
in need of extensive repairs before they could be considered again fit
for winter service in the Gulf. The Hartford was in better condition
than the other two, being uninjured below the water line, but the severe
actions through which she had passed were proved by the scars, two
hundred and forty in number, where she had been struck by shot or
shell.

CHAPTER X.

MOBILE.

1864.

By the fall of the last and most powerful of the Confederate strongholds
upon the Mississippi, and the consequent assertion of control by the
United States Government over the whole of the great water course, was
accomplished the first and chief of the two objects toward which
Farragut was to co-operate. After manifold efforts and failures, the
combined forces of the United States had at last sundered the
Confederacy in twain along the principal one of those natural strategic
lines which intersected it, and which make the strength or the weakness
of States according as they are able or unable to hold them against an
enemy. Of the two fragments, the smaller was militarily important only
as a feeder to the other. Severed from the body to which they belonged,
the seceded States west of the Mississippi sank into insignificance; the
fire that had raged there would smoulder and die of itself, now that a
broad belt which could not be passed interposed between it and the
greater conflagration in the East.

It next became the task of the Union forces to hold firmly, by adequate
defensive measures, the line they had gained; while the great mass of
troops heretofore employed along the Mississip