ey could not
handle her. It was now useless to try to run her through the Union
fleet, for the lightening process had exposed three feet of her
unarmed hull to the fire of the enemy. It was accordingly determined
that she should be destroyed. She was run ashore on Craney Island, and
trains of powder laid all over her, and fired. Every gun was loaded,
and the doors of the magazine were left open. Her crew then started on
the march for the interior. It was just in the gray of the morning
that a rumbling of the earth was felt, followed by a shock that made
all stagger. A column of smoke and flame shot into the air; huge
cannon were hurled high above the tree-tops, discharging in mid-air.
One shot fell in the woods some distance ahead of the marching crew,
and all knew that it marked the end of the mighty "Merrimac."

CHAPTER X.

THE NAVY IN THE INLAND WATERS. -- THE MISSISSIPPI SQUADRON. --
SWEEPING THE TENNESSEE RIVER.

We will now leave for a time the blue-water sailors, whose battles,
triumphs, and defeats we have been considering, and look at the work
done by the tars of both North and South on the great waterways which
cut up the central portion of the United States, known as the Valley
of the Mississippi. It was in this section that the navy of the North
did some of its most effective work against the Confederacy, and it
was there that the sailor boys of the South did many deeds of the most
desperate valor. There is much of romance about service on the blue
ocean which is not to be found in routine duty along the yellow muddy
streams that flowed through the territory claimed by King Cotton. The
high, tapering masts, the yards squared and gracefully proportioned,
the rigging taut, and with each rope in its place, of an
ocean-frigate, are not seen in the squat, box-like gunboats that
dashed by the batteries at Vicksburg, or hurled shot and shell at each
other in the affair at Memphis. But Farragut, stanch old sea-dog as he
was, did much of his grandest fighting on the turbid waters of the
Mississippi; and the work of the great fleet at Port Royal was fully
equalled by Porter's mortar-boats below New Orleans.

Let us follow the fortunes of the Union fleet on their cruises about
the great rivers of the interior, and first discover what the work was
that they set out to perform.

The rivers making up the Mississippi system flow for the greater part
of their length through the States that had joined