hstanding what had been done at Yazoo
Pass, were taken by surprise, not having believed that even gunboats
would try to penetrate by those marshy, willowy ditches. On the night
of the 17th, Colonel Ferguson, commanding the district, first received
word at his headquarters on Deer Creek, forty miles above Rolling
Fork, that the gunboats had entered the creek. He at once hurried a
battalion of sharpshooters and some artillery on board a steamer and
hastened down to Rolling Fork, being so lucky as to get there before
the vessels, on the afternoon of the 19th. A small detached body of
cavalry were ahead of him, and, acting on their own account, had begun
to cut down trees across the stream. Anticipating this, the admiral
had sent Lieutenant Murphy ahead in a tug and he had come up in time
to stop the felling of the first; but the horsemen galloped across
country faster than the tug could force her way through the channel
and at last got down a large tree, which arrested the tug till the
rest of the force came up. Then the slaves, with muskets to their
breasts, were compelled to ply their axes to stop the advance of those
to whom they looked for freedom.

The situation was critical, and the crews turned to with a will,
working night and day to clear away these obstacles, without sleep and
snatching their food. They were now five or six miles from Rolling
Fork, and hearing that the enemy were landing, Lieutenant Murphy was
sent forward with 300 men and two howitzers to hold the stream until
the gunboats could cover it with their guns; which he did, occupying
an Indian mound sixty feet high. After working all night and the next
day, the 19th, the squadron had hewed its way by sundown to within
eight hundred yards of Rolling Fork. They rested that night, and the
morning of the 20th again started to work through the willows, but the
lithe trees resisted all their efforts to push through, and had either
to be pulled up one by one or cut off under water, both tedious
processes. Meanwhile Ferguson, having collected 800 men and six pieces
of artillery, attacked Murphy's little body of men, who had to be
recalled. At three in the afternoon Featherstone's brigade, with a
section of artillery, arrived from Vicksburg to reinforce the enemy,
and toward sundown opened a sharp fire upon the gunboats from a
distance. Though this was easily silenced by the vessels, the
difficulty of throwing out working parties in the presence of the
enemy'