Half-way up the bayou the boats
were stopped by obstructions and had to back down again. Toward
noon the troops landed and marched on Grand Gulf in two detachments,
one under Paine, consisting of the 4th Wisconsin and 9th Connecticut
regiments and a section of Nims's battery; the other, under Dudley,
embracing the remainder of the force. Paine had a short skirmish
with the enemy near Grand Gulf, and captured eight prisoners, but
their camp, a small one, was found abandoned. The same evening
the troops re-embarked, and on the 25th arrived before Vicksburg.

The orders from Butler, under which Williams was now acting, required
him to take or burn Vicksburg at all hazards. Here, too, we catch
the first glimpse of the famous canal upon which so much labor was
to be expended during the next year with so little result. "You
will send up a regiment or two at once," Butler said, "and cut off
the neck of land beyond Vicksburg by means of a trench, making a
gap about four feet deep and five feet wide."

To accomplish this purpose Williams had with him four regiments
and ten guns, making an effective force in all less than three
thousand, rapidly diminished by hard work, close quarters, meagre
rations, and a bad climate nearly at its worst.

On the 24th of June the _Monarch_, commanded by Lieutenant-Colonel
Alfred W. Ellet, arrived in the reach above Vicksburg. This was
one of the nondescript fleet of rams, planned, built, equipped,
and manned, under the orders of the War Department, by Ellet's
elder brother, Colonel Charles Ellet, Jr., but now acting under
the orders of the Commander of the Mississippi fleet. Ellet promptly
sent a party of four volunteers, led by his young nephew, Medical
Cadet Charles R. Ellet, to communicate with Farragut across the
narrow neck of land opposite Vicksburg. This was the first direct
communication between the northern and southern columns. By it
Farragut learned of the abandonment of Fort Pillow by the Confederates
on the 4th of June, and the capture of Memphis on the 6th, after
a hard naval fight, in which nearly the whole Confederate fleet
was taken or destroyed. There Charles Ellet was mortally wounded.
When the _Monarch_ party went back to their vessel, they bore with
them a letter from Farragut, the contents of which being promptly
made known by Ellet to Davis, brought that officer, with his fleet,
at once to Vicksburg. On the following day, June 25th, a detachment
of the 4th