is left a long, shallow
hull, with a powerful engine in the centre, and great paddle-wheels
towering on either side; the whole so light that the soldiers of
Grant's army, when they first saw one, stoutly averred that "those
boats could run on a heavy dew." The hull was then thinly plated with
iron, and the prow lengthened, and made massive, until it formed the
terrible "ram," fallen into disuse since the days of the Greek
galleys, to be taken up again by naval architects in the nineteenth
century. Then on the deck was built a pent-house of oak and iron, with
sloping sides just high enough to cover the engine. The two towering
smoke-stacks, the pride of the old river-steamers, were cut down to
squat pipes protruding a foot or two above the strange structure. In
the sides were embrasures, from which, when open, peered the iron
muzzles of the dogs of war, ready to show their teeth and spit fire
and iron at the enemy. This was the most powerful type of the river
gunboat, and with them the Confederacy was fairly well provided;
though it was not long before the war department of the United States
was well supplied with similar ships. It was these iron-clad gunboats
that used to rouse the anger of the doughty Admiral Farragut, who
persisted in declaring them cowardly engines of destruction, and
predicted that as they came into use, the race of brave fighting
jack-tars would disappear. On one occasion the admiral was ploughing
his way up the Mississippi above New Orleans, in one of Commodore
Bailey's river iron-clads. The batteries of the enemy on either hand
were pounding away at the ascending ships, hurling huge bolts of iron
against their mailed sides, with a thunder that was deafening, and a
shock that made the stricken ships reel. The admiral stood in the
gunroom of one of the iron-clads, watching the men working the guns,
in an atmosphere reeking with the smoke of the powder. A look of
manifest disapproval was on his face. Suddenly an unusually
well-directed shot struck a weak point in the armor, and, bursting
through, killed two men near the admiral's position. He looked for a
moment on the ghastly spectacle, then turning to an officer said, "You
may stay here in your iron-clad room if you wish: as for me, I feel
safer on deck." And on deck he went, and stayed there while the fleet
passed through the hail of shot and shell.

The scarcity of iron in the Southern States prevented the naval
authorities of the newly organiz