,
therefore, directed before I went to Young's Point to push the work of
widening and deepening this canal. After my arrival the work was
diligently pushed with about 4,000 men--as many as could be used to
advantage--until interrupted by a sudden rise in the river that broke a
dam at the upper end, which had been put there to keep the water out
until the excavation was completed. This was on the 8th of March.

Even if the canal had proven a success, so far as to be navigable for
steamers, it could not have been of much advantage to us. It runs in a
direction almost perpendicular to the line of bluffs on the opposite
side, or east bank, of the river. As soon as the enemy discovered what
we were doing he established a battery commanding the canal throughout
its length. This battery soon drove out our dredges, two in number,
which were doing the work of thousands of men. Had the canal been
completed it might have proven of some use in running transports
through, under the cover of night, to use below; but they would yet have
to run batteries, though for a much shorter distance.

While this work was progressing we were busy in other directions, trying
to find an available landing on high ground on the east bank of the
river, or to make water-ways to get below the city, avoiding the
batteries.

On the 30th of January, the day after my arrival at the front, I ordered
General McPherson, stationed with his corps at Lake Providence, to cut
the levee at that point. If successful in opening a channel for
navigation by this route, it would carry us to the Mississippi River
through the mouth of the Red River, just above Port Hudson and four
hundred miles below Vicksburg by the river.

Lake Providence is a part of the old bed of the Mississippi, about a
mile from the present channel. It is six miles long and has its outlet
through Bayou Baxter, Bayou Macon, and the Tensas, Washita and Red
Rivers. The last three are navigable streams at all seasons. Bayous
Baxter and Macon are narrow and tortuous, and the banks are covered with
dense forests overhanging the channel. They were also filled with
fallen timber, the accumulation of years. The land along the
Mississippi River, from Memphis down, is in all instances highest next
to the river, except where the river washes the bluffs which form the
boundary of the valley through which it winds. Bayou Baxter, as it
reaches lower land, begins to spread out and disappears entire