a country soon to
pass into the enemy's hands by the retreat of the army.

Desperate as the case seemed, relief came. Lieutenant-Colonel Joseph
Bailey, of the Fourth Wisconsin Volunteers, was at this time acting as
Chief Engineer of the Nineteenth Army Corps, General Franklin's. He
was a man who had had much experience on the watercourses of the
Northwestern country, and had learned to use dams to overcome
obstacles arising from shallow water in variable streams. The year
before he had applied this knowledge to free two transport steamers,
which had been taken when Port Hudson fell, from their confinement in
Thompson's Creek, where the falling water had left them sunk in the
sand. As the army fell back, and during its stay at Grand Ecore, he
had heard rumors about the scant water at the Falls, and the thought
had taken hold of his mind that he might now build a dam on a greater
scale and to a more vital purpose than ever before.

His idea, first broached to General Franklin, was through him conveyed
to Banks and Porter, and generally through the army. Franklin, himself
an engineer, thought well of it, and so did some others; but most
doubted, and many jeered. The enemy themselves, when they became aware
of it, laughed, and their pickets and prisoners alike cried
scoffingly, "How about that dam?" But Bailey had the faith that moves
mountains, and he was moreover happy in finding at his hands the
fittest tools for the work. Among the troops in the far Southwest were
two or three regiments from Maine, the northeasternmost of all the
States. These had been woodmen and lumbermen from their youth, among
their native forests, and a regiment of them now turned trained and
willing arms upon the great trees on the north shore of the Red River;
and there were many others who, on a smaller scale and in different
scenes, had experience in the kind of work now to be done. Time was
pressing, and from two to three thousand men were at once set to work
on the 1st of May. The Falls are about a mile in length, filled with
rugged rocks which, at this low water, were bare or nearly so, the
water rushing down around, or over, them with great swiftness. At the
point below, where the dam was to be built, the river is 758 feet
wide, and the current was then between nine and ten miles an hour.
From the north bank was built what was called the "tree dam," formed
of large trees laid with the current, the branches interlocking, the
trunks down st