Both were amply protected from storming by wide, deep moats
always filled with water.

In these two forts were stationed troops made up of the finest young
men of New Orleans. For them it was a gay station. Far removed from
the fighting on the frontier, and within an easy journey of their
homes, they frolicked away the first year of the war. Every week gay
parties of pleasure-seekers from New Orleans would come down; and the
proud defenders would take their friends to the frowning bastions, and
point out how easily they could blow the enemy's fleet out of water if
the ships ever came within range of those heavy guns. But the ships
did not come within range of the guns for many months. They contented
themselves with lying at the Head of the Passes, and stopping all
intercourse with the outer world, until New Orleans began to get
shabby and ragged and hungry, and the pleasure-parties came less often
to the forts, and the gay young soldiers saw their uniforms getting
old and tattered, but knew not where to get the cloth to replace them.

[Illustration: Levee at New Orleans before the War.]

In the city no rumble of commerce was heard on the streets. Grass grew
on the deserted levee, where in times of peace the brown and white
cotton-bales were piled by the thousand, waiting for strong black
hands to seize and swing them upon the decks of the trim Liverpool
packets, that lay three or four deep along the river front. The huge
gray custom-house that stood at the foot of Canal Street no longer
resounded with the rapid tread of sea-captains or busy merchants. From
the pipes of the cotton-presses, the rush of the escaping steam, as
the ruthless press squeezed the great bale into one-third its original
size, was no longer heard. Most of the great towering steamboats that
came rushing down the river with stores of cotton or sugar had long
since been cut down into squat, powerful gunboats, or were tied up
idly to the bank. Across the river, in the shipyards of Algiers, there
seemed a little more life; for there workmen were busy changing
peaceful merchant vessels into gunboats and rams, that were, the
people fondly hoped, to drive away the men-of-war at the river's mouth
and save the city from starvation. From time to time the streets of
the city resounded with the notes of drum and fife, as one after the
other the militia companies went off to the front and the fighting.
Then the time came when none were left save the "Confeder