shallowness of the water was such that by
no means could they be surrounded. The sailors were prepared for a
desperate conflict, and spent the night before the battle in tricing
up the boarding-nettings, sharpening cutlasses, and getting small-arms
in good trim. In the morning the British came on to the attack. It was
a long pull from the fleet to the place of battle: so their commander
brought his flotilla to anchor just out of range of the American guns;
and there the grim old veterans devoured their dinners, and took their
rations of grog, with appetites undisturbed by the thought of the
coming conflict. Dinner over, the enemy weighed anchor, and dashed
forward, with long, swift strokes, into the very flashes of the
Americans' cannon. The Americans knew that their one chance of victory
was to keep the overwhelming forces of their foe out of boarding
distance, and they worked their guns with a rapidity born of
desperation. Musket-bullets, grape-shot, and canister poured in a
murderous fire upon the advancing boats. But the sturdy old British
veterans knew that the best way to stop that fire was to get at the
base of it; and they pressed on undauntedly, responding vigorously,
meanwhile, with their bow guns. Soon they were up to the gunwales of
the American flotilla, and the grappling-irons were fixed; then, with
sharp blows of cutlasses, deadly play of the pikes, and a ceaseless
rattle of small-arms, they poured upon the decks of the Americans. The
boarding-nettings could not long check so furious a foe, and fell
before the fierce slash of the cutlasses. The decks once gained, the
overpowering numbers of the Englishmen crushed all further resistance;
and the flotilla was finally taken, after about one hundred of the
enemy and fifty Americans had fallen.

The American flotilla being thus shattered, there remained no further
obstacle to prevent the landing of the invading army. Of the advance
of that brilliant body of veteran troops over sands and marshes, and
through sluggish bayous and canals half-full of stagnant water, until
they emerged on the bank of the river, nine miles below New Orleans,
it is not my purpose to speak further. Nor does an account of Gen.
Jackson's vigorous measures of defence and glorious victory come
within the province of this narrative. The interesting story of
Jackson's creation of an army from leather-shirted Kentucky riflemen,
gay Creoles from the Creole Quarter of the Crescent City, swart