erpendicular to it; but, after advancing a quarter
of a mile, General Pillow said it was too late in the day to accomplish
anything, and the troops returned to their quarters. Major Brown,
commanding the Twentieth Mississippi, reports substantially the same,
and adds they were under fire as soon as they began the advance, and one
of his men was shot before they advanced one hundred yards.

About three o'clock in the afternoon Flag Officer Foote moved his fleet
up the river to attack the fort. The flag-ship St. Louis and three other
ironclads, the Carondelet, Louisville, and Pittsburg, each armed with
thirteen guns, advanced, followed by the wooden gunboats Tyler and
Conestoga. The water-battery attacked was a mere trench twenty feet
wide, sunk in the hill-side. The excavated earth thrown up outside the
ditch made a rampart twelve feet through at the summit. Carefully laid
sand-bags added to the height of the rampart, and left narrow spaces for
embrasures; narrow, but sufficient there, where the channel of the
river, straight and narrow, required the fleet to advance in a straight
line and with a narrow front. Such a work, at an elevation of thirty
feet above the water, was almost unassailable.

The gunboats opened fire when a mile and a half from the fort, and
continued advancing slowly and firing rapidly till the ironclads were
within four hundred yards of the battery. The boats could use only their
bow-guns, three on each boat. After a severe action of an hour and a
half, a solid shot entering the pilot-house of the flag-ship, carried
away the wheel, and the tiller-ropes of the Louisville were disabled by
a shot. The relieving-tackles being no longer able to steer or control
these boats in the rapid current, they became wholly unmanageable, and
drifted down the river. The other two boats were also damaged, and the
whole fleet withdrew. There were fifty-four, officers and men, killed
and wounded on the fleet--Commodore Foote being one of the wounded. The
flag-ship alone was struck fifty-nine times. One rifled gun on the
Carondelet burst during the action. The terrible pounding by the heavy
navy guns seems to have inflicted no injury upon the earthworks, their
armament, or the men.

Transports arrived in the course of the day, bringing additional
reinforcements. General McArthur was ordered at 5 P.M. to occupy ground
on the extreme right of the National line, to act as a reserve to
General Oglesby. He reached the assi