negro cabins or the
columned front of a planter's house showing in the distance. Then, as
the flotilla steamed on, this fair prospect would disappear, and be
replaced by noisome cypress brakes, hung thick with the funereal
Spanish moss, and harboring beneath the black water many a noxious
reptile.

So through the ever-changing scenery the gunboats moved along, making
but little progress, but meeting with no serious obstacle, until one
morning there appeared on a bit of high ground, some yards in advance
of the leading gunboat, an army officer mounted on an old white horse.
It was Gen. Sherman, and his troops were in camp near by. He greeted
the naval forces cheerily, and, rallying Porter on the amphibious
service into which his gunboats had been forced, warned him that he
would soon have not a smokestack standing, nor a boat left at the
davits.

"So much the better," said the undaunted admiral. "All I want is an
engine, guns, and a hull to float them. As to boats, they are very
much in the way."

A short time only was spent in consultation, and then Sherman with his
forces left the bayou and plunged into the interior, first warning
Porter that he would have a hard time getting any farther, even if the
enemy did not come down and surround him. But Porter was not the man
to abandon the advance, so long as there was water enough to float his
gunboats. Besides, he had gained some ideas regarding navigation in
the forests, that enabled him to move his fleet forward with more
celerity than at first. When a tree blocked the course of the
iron-clads, they no longer stopped to clear it away by work with the
axes; but, clapping on all steam, the powerful rams dashed at the
woody obstruction, and with repeated blows soon knocked it out of the
way.

Soon after leaving Sherman, Porter saw that the difficulties he had
thus far met and conquered were as nothing to those which he had yet
to encounter. The comparatively broad stream up which he had been
steaming came to an end, and his further progress must be through
Cypress Bayou, a canal just forty-six feet wide..[??-second period a
smudge?] The broadest gunboat was forty-two feet wide, and to enter
that narrow stream made retreat out of the question: there could be no
turning round to fly. The levees rose on either side of the narrow
canal high above the decks of the iron-clads, so that the cannon could
not be sufficiently elevated to do effective work in case of an
attack.