Dorn's division (Confederate) is here, and lies safely behind the hills.
The water is too low for me to go over twelve or fifteen miles above
Vicksburg." The last sentence reveals clearly enough the madness of
attempting to take three of the best ships of the navy to the upper
river in falling water. Fortunately the insufficient depth now was
above--not below--them, and they were not utterly cut off from the sea.
Commander Porter, however, who started down river a week later, in
compliance with orders summoning him to Washington, and than whom the
navy had no more active nor enterprising officer, wrote back to the
flag-officer that if the big ships did not soon return he feared they
would have to remain till next year.

Three days after Farragut passed the batteries of Vicksburg, on the 1st
of July, the Mississippi flotilla, under the command of Flag-officer
Charles H. Davis, joined him from above; having left Memphis only two
days before, but favored in their voyage by the current, by competent
pilots, and by a draught suited to the difficulties of river navigation.
The united squadrons continued together until the 15th of July, lying at
anchor near the neck of the promontory opposite Vicksburg; with the
exception of the Brooklyn and the two gunboats which had not passed up
on the 28th of June. These remained below the works, and on the opposite
side of the promontory.

The position of the two flag-officers was about four miles below the
mouth of the Yazoo River, a tributary of the Mississippi, which enters
the main stream on the east side not far above Vicksburg. It was known
to them that there was somewhere in the Yazoo an ironclad ram called the
Arkansas; which, more fortunate than the Mississippi at New Orleans, had
been hurried away from Memphis just before that city fell into the hands
of the United States forces. She was a vessel of between eight hundred
and a thousand tons burden, carrying ten guns, which were protected by
three inches of railroad iron, backed by bales of compressed cotton
firmly braced. Her most dangerous weapon, however, was her ram; but,
owing to the lightness and bad construction of the engines, this was not
as formidable as it otherwise might have been to the enemy's ships.

So little injury had thus far been done to the United States vessels by
the rams of the Confederates that the two flag-officers were probably
lulled into a state of over-security, and they allowed their squadrons
t