ified; not because we could not have passed it easily
enough, _but we would have been cut off from our supplies of coal and
provisions_. We would have been placed between two enemies (Vicksburg
and Memphis), and so the captains advised me not to do it. I was very
sick at the time, and yielded to their advice, _which I think was good_;
but I doubt if I would have taken it had I been well." Here is seen,
transpiring vividly enough, the uncertainty and indecision arising from
the conflict between the orders of the Department and his own sounder
judgment. He would fain obey; yet no orders could override, though they
might cruelly embarrass, the responsibility of the officer in command on
the spot. "Fighting is nothing," he adds, "to the evils of the
river--getting on shore, running foul of one another, losing anchors,
etc." "The army," he resumes in his dispatch to the Department, "had
been sent up early with a few days' rations, and I was compelled to
supply them from the squadron, thereby reducing our own supplies, which
were barely sufficient to bring the ships back to New Orleans, making
allowance for probable delays. The river was now beginning to fall, and
I apprehended great difficulty in getting down should I delay much
longer. In the mean time coal vessels had been towed up the river just
above Natchez (a hundred miles below Vicksburg), which vessels I was
obliged to bring down and keep in company with the vessels of war, for
fear of their being captured by the guerrilla bands which appear to
infest almost the entire banks of the river wherever there are rapids
and bluffs."

Such were some of the difficulties being experienced when the
Assistant-Secretary of the Navy was writing: "The _only_ anxiety _we_
feel is to know if you have followed up your instructions and pushed a
strong force up the river to meet the Western flotilla." "I had no
conception," replied Farragut, "that the Department ever contemplated
that the ships of this squadron were to attempt to go to Memphis, above
which the Western flotilla then was; nor did I believe it was
practicable for them to do so, unless under the most favorable
circumstances, in time of peace, when their supplies could be obtained
along the river. The gunboats are nearly all so damaged that they are
certainly not in condition to contend with ironclad rams coming down
upon them with the current.... We consider the advantage entirely in
favor of the vessel that has the current