guards extending out, were so much impeded that
the gunboats got far ahead. Porter, with his fleet, got within a few
hundred yards of where the sailing would have been clear and free from
the obstructions caused by felling trees into the water, when he
encountered rebel sharp-shooters, and his progress was delayed by
obstructions in his front. He could do nothing with gunboats against
sharpshooters. The rebels, learning his route, had sent in about 4,000
men--many more than there were sailors in the fleet.

Sherman went back, at the request of the admiral, to clear out Black
Bayou and to hurry up reinforcements, which were far behind. On the
night of the 19th he received notice from the admiral that he had been
attacked by sharp-shooters and was in imminent peril. Sherman at once
returned through Black Bayou in a canoe, and passed on until he met a
steamer, with the last of the reinforcements he had, coming up. They
tried to force their way through Black Bayou with their steamer, but,
finding it slow and tedious work, debarked and pushed forward on foot.
It was night when they landed, and intensely dark. There was but a
narrow strip of land above water, and that was grown up with underbrush
or cane. The troops lighted their way through this with candles carried
in their hands for a mile and a half, when they came to an open
plantation. Here the troops rested until morning. They made twenty-one
miles from this resting-place by noon the next day, and were in time to
rescue the fleet. Porter had fully made up his mind to blow up the
gunboats rather than have them fall into the hands of the enemy. More
welcome visitors he probably never met than the "boys in blue" on this
occasion. The vessels were backed out and returned to their rendezvous
on the Mississippi; and thus ended in failure the fourth attempt to get
in rear of Vicksburg.

CHAPTER XXXII.

THE BAYOUS WEST OF THE MISSISSIPPI--CRITICISMS OF THE NORTHERN PRESS
--RUNNING THE BATTERIES--LOSS OF THE INDIANOLA--DISPOSITION OF THE
TROOPS.

The original canal scheme was also abandoned on the 27th of March. The
effort to make a waterway through Lake Providence and the connecting
bayous was abandoned as wholly impracticable about the same time.

At Milliken's Bend, and also at Young's Point, bayous or channels start,
which connecting with other bayous passing Richmond, Louisiana, enter
the Mississippi at Carthage twenty-five or thirty miles above Gra