North America-2 [65]
Many wore heavy overboots coming up the leg-- boots of excellent manufacture, and from their cost, if for no other reason, quite out of the reach of an English soldier--boots in which a man would be not at all unfortunate to find himself hunting; but from these, or from their high-lows, shoes, or whatever they might wear, the mud had never been even scraped. These men were all warmly clothed, but clothed apparently with an endeavor to contract as much mud as might be possible. The generals and commodores were gone up the Ohio River and up the Tennessee in an expedition with gunboats, which turned out to be successful, and of which we have all read in the daily history of this war. They had departed the day before our arrival; and though we still found at Cairo a squadron of gun-boats--if gun-boats go in squadrons--the bulk of the army had been moved. There were left there one regiment and one colonel, who kindly described to us the battles he had fought, and gave us permission to see everything that was to be seen. Four of these gun-boats were still lying in the Ohio, close under the terminus of the railway, with their flat, ugly noses against the muddy bank; and we were shown over two of them. They certainly seemed to be formidable weapons for river warfare, and to have been "got up quite irrespective of expense." So much, indeed, may be said for the Americans throughout the war. They cannot be accused of parsimony. The largest of these vessels, called the "Benton," had cost 36,000l. These boats are made with sides sloping inward at an angle of forty-five degrees. The iron is two and a half inches thick, and it has not, I believe, been calculated that this will resist cannon-shot of great weight, should it be struck in a direct line. But the angle of the sides of the boat makes it improbable that any such shot should strike them; and the iron, bedded as it is upon oak, is supposed to be sufficient to turn a shot that does not hit it in a direct line. The boats are also roofed in with iron; and the pilots who steer the vessel stand incased, as it were, under an iron cupola. I imagine that these boats are well calculated for the river service, for which they have been built. Six or seven of them had gone up the Tennessee River the day before we reached Cairo; and while we were there they succeeded in knocking down Fort Henry, and in carrying off the soldiers stationed there and the officer in command. One of the boats, however, had been penetrated by a shot, which made its way into the boiler; and the men on deck--six, I think, in number--were scalded to death by the escaping steam. The two pilots up in the cupola were destroyed in this terrible manner. As they were altogether closed in by the iron roof and sides, there was no escape for the steam. The boats, however, were well made and very powerfully armed, and will probably succeed in driving the secessionist armies away from the great river banks. By what machinery the secessionist armies are to be followed into the interior is altogether another question. But there was also another fleet at Cairo, and we were informed that we were just in time to see the first essay made at testing the utility of this armada. It consisted of no less than thirty-eight mortar-boats, each of which had cost 1700l. These mortar-boats were broad, flat-bottomed rafts, each constructed with a deck raised three feet above the bottom. They were protected by high iron sides supposed to be proof against rifle-balls, and, when supplied, had been furnished each with a little boat, a rope, and four rough sweeps or oars. They had no other furniture or belongings, and were to be moved either by steam-tugs or by the use of the long oars which were sent with them. It was intended that one 13-inch mortar, of enormous weight, should be put upon each; that these mortars should be fired with twenty-three pounds of powder; and that the shell thrown should, at a distance of three miles, fall with absolute precision into any devoted town which the rebels might hold the river banks. The