from the Gulf, against a continuous current, and right through
the heart of a hostile land. Finding that there were thirty
thousand Confederates in, near, or within a day of Vicksburg he
and General Thomas Williams agreed that nothing could be done
with the fifteen hundred troops which formed the only landing
party. Sickness and casualties had reduced the ships' companies;
so there were not even a few seamen to spare as reinforcements
for these fifteen hundred soldiers, whom Butler had sent, under
Williams, with the fleet. Then Farragut turned back, his stores
running dangerously short owing to the enormous difficulties of
keeping open his long, precarious line of communications. "I
arrived in New Orleans with five or six days' provisions and one
anchor, and am now trying to procure others . . . . Fighting is
nothing to the evils of the river--getting on shore, running foul
of one another, losing anchors, etc." In a confidential letter
home he is still more outspoken. "They will keep us in this river
till the vessels break down and all the little reputation we have
made has evaporated. The Government appears to think that we can
do anything. They expect, me to navigate the Mississippi nine
hundred miles in the face of batteries, ironclad rams, etc.; and
yet with all the ironclad vessels they have North they could not
get to Norfolk or Richmond."

Back from Washington came still more urgent orders to join the
Mississippi flotilla which was coming down to Vicksburg from the
north under Flag Officer Charles H. Davis. So once more the fleet
worked its laboriously wasteful way up to Vicksburg, where it
passed the forts with the help of Porter's flotilla of
mortar-boats on the twenty-eighth of June and joined Davis on the
first of July. There, in useless danger, the joint forces lay