er batteries of surpassing beauty, that
seemed, at a little distance, successions of gentle terraces. Their
pieces were likewise of enormous calibre, and their number almost
incredible. The advanced line of fortifications, sketched from the mouth
of Warwick creek, on the South, to a point fifteen miles distant on the
York: one hundred and forty guns were planted along this chain of
defences; but there were two other concentric lines, mounting, each, one
hundred and twenty, and two hundred and forty guns. The remote series
consisted of six forts of massive size and height, fronted by swamps and
flooded meadows, with frequent creeks and ravines interposing; sharp
_fraise_ and _abattis_ planted against scarp and slope, pointed cruelly
eastward. There were two water batteries, of six and four thirty-two
columbiads respectively, and the town itself, which stands upon a red
clay bluff, was encircled by a series of immense rifled and smooth-bore
pieces, including a powerful pivot-gun, that one of McClellan's shells
struck during the first day's bombardment, and split it into fragments.
At Gloucester Point, across the York river, the great guns of the
_Merrimac_ were planted, it is said, and a fleet of fire-rafts and
torpedo-ships were moored in the stream. By all accounts, there could
have been no less than five hundred guns behind the Confederate
entrenchments, the greater portion, of course, field-pieces, and, as the
defending army was composed of one hundred thousand men, we must add
that number of small arms to the list of ordnance. If we compute the
Federals at so high a figure,--and they could scarcely have had less
than a hundred thousand men afield,--we must increase the enormous
amount of their field, siege, and small ordnance, by the naval guns of
the fleet, that stood anchored in the bay. It is probable that a
thousand cannon and two hundred thousand muskets were assembled in and
around Yorktown during this memorable siege. The mind shudders to see
the terrible deductions of these statistics. The monster, who wished
that the world had but one neck, that he might sever it, would have
gloated at such realization! How many days or hours would have here
sufficed to annihilate all the races of men? Happily, the world was
spared the spectacle of these deadly mouths at once aflame. Beautiful
but awful must have been the scene, and the earth must have staggered
with the shock. One might almost have imagined that man, in his