roken up and dispersed to all four of the winds, save that which
might have blown them to the south. Halleck declared himself unable
to respond to Farragut's urgent appeal for help. "I cannot," he
said, when urged by Stanton; "I am sending reinforcements to General
Curtis, in Arkansas, and to General Buell, in Tennessee and Kentucky."
Not only this, but he was being called upon by Lincoln himself for
25,000 troops to reinforce the Army of the Potomac before Richmond.
"Probably I shall be able to do so," Halleck told Farragut, "as
soon as I can get my troops more concentrated. This may delay the
clearing of the river, but its accomplishment will be certain in
a few weeks."

Meanwhile Williams was hard at work on the canal. In addition to
such details as could be furnished by the troops without wholly
neglecting the absolutely necessary portions of their military
duties, Williams had employed a force of about 1,200 negroes, rather
poorly provided with tools. The work was not confined to excavation,
but involved the cutting down of the large cottonwoods and the
clearing away of the dense masses of willows that covered the low
ground and matted the heavy soil with their tangled roots. By the
4th of July the excavation had reached a depth in the hard clay of
nearly seven feet. The length of the canal was about one and a
half miles. By the 11th of July the cut, originally intended to
be four feet deep and five feet wide, with a profile of twenty
square feet, had been excavated through this stiff clay to a depth
of thirteen feet and a width of eighteen feet, presenting a profile
of 234 feet. The river, which, up to this time, had been falling
more rapidly than the utmost exertions had been able to sink the
bottom of the canal, had now begun to fall more slowly, so that at
last the grade was about eighteen inches below the river level.
In a few hours the water was to have been let in. Suddenly the
banks began to cave, and before any thing could be done to remedy
this, the river, still falling, was once more below the bottom of
the cut. Although with this scanty and overworked force he had
already performed nearly twelve times the amount of labor originally
contemplated, Williams does not seem to have been discouraged at
this; his orders were to make the cut, and his purpose clearly was
to make it, even if it should take, as he thought it would, the
whole of the next three months. He set to work with vigor to
colle