ch was
conducted when we were near by, is rather stunning. The charge is from
fifteen to twenty-two pounds. The shell weighs two hundred and thirty
pounds. For a familiar illustration, it is about the size of a large
soup-plate. So your readers may imagine, when they sit down to dinner,
the emotions they would experience if they happened to see a ball of
iron of those dimensions coming toward them at the rate of a thousand
miles a minute. The boat is moored alongside the shore, so as to
withstand the shock firmly, and the men go ashore when the mortar is
fired. A pull of the string does the work, and the whole vicinity is
shaken with the concussion. The report is deafening, and the most
enthusiastic person gets enough of it with two or three discharges.
There is no sound from the shell at this point of observation, and no
indication to mark the course it is taking; but in a few seconds the
attentive observer with a good glass will see the cloud of smoke that
follows its explosion, and then the report comes back with a dull
boom. If it has done execution, the enemy may be seen carrying off
their killed and wounded."

And so from mortar-boats and gunboats, the iron hail was poured upon
the little island, but without effect. When Foote with his flotilla
first opened fire, he thought that the Confederate works would be
swept away in a day or two. His ordnance was the heaviest ever seen on
the Mississippi, and in number his guns were enough to have battered
down a mountain. But his days grew to weeks, and still the flag of the
Confederacy floated above Island No. 10. The men on the mortar-boats
were giving way under the tremendous shocks of the explosions. Many
were rendered deaf for days at a time. The jar of the explosions
brought to the surface of the river hundreds of old logs and roots
that had lain rotting in the soft ooze of the bottom. When all the
mortars were engaged, the surface of the river was covered with foam
and bubbles; and men by the thousand went about with their ears
stuffed with tow, to protect them against the sound. Yet, after weeks
of such firing, Gen. Beauregard telegraphed to Richmond, that the
Yankees had "thrown three thousand shells, and burned fifty tons of
gunpowder," without injuring his batteries in the least.

The Confederates remained passive in their trenches. They had no guns
that would carry far enough to reply to Foote's mortars, and they did
not wish to waste powder. It was galling t