ant's
army invested the fort, and kept up a constant cannonade; then the
defenders, despairing of escape, and seeing no use of further
prolonging the defence, surrendered.

The capture of Fort Donelson was an important success for the Union
arms. In addition to the large number of prisoners, and the great
quantity of munitions of war captured, the destruction of the fort
left the Cumberland River open to the passage of the Union gunboats,
and the Confederate battle-line was moved back yet another point. But
now was to come a most heroic test of the power of the river-navy and
the army of the North.

Some sixty miles below Cairo, the rushing, tawny current of the mighty
Mississippi turns suddenly northward, sweeping back, apparently,
toward its source, in a great bend eight or ten miles long. At the
point where the swift current sweeps around the bend, is a low-lying
island, about a mile long and half a mile wide. This is known as
Island No. 10; and at the opening of the war, it was supposed to hold
the key to the navigation of the Mississippi River. Here the
Confederates had thrown up powerful earthworks, the heavy guns in
which effectually commanded the river, both up and down stream. The
works were protected against a land bombardment by the fact that the
only tenable bit of land, New Madrid, was held by Confederate troops.
The shores of the Mississippi about Island No. 10 present the
dreariest appearance imaginable. The Missouri shore is low and swampy.
In 1811 an earthquake-shock rent the land asunder. Great tracts were
sunk beneath the water-level of the river. Trees were thrown down, and
lie rotting in the black and miasmatic water. Other portions of the
land were thrown up, rugged, and covered with rank vegetation, making
hills that serve only as places of refuge for water-moccasons and
other noxious reptiles. Around this dreary waste of mud and water, the
river rushes in an abrupt bend, making a peninsula ten miles long and
three wide. Below this peninsula is New Madrid, a little village in
the least settled part of Missouri; here the Confederates had
established an army-post, and thrown up strong intrenchments. It was
not, however, upon the intrenchments that they relied, but rather upon
the impassable morasses by which they were surrounded on every side.
In New Madrid were posted five or six thousand men; a small fleet of
Confederate gunboats lay in the stream off the village; and higher up
the river was Is