that a shaft was begun to run
obliquely under the salient, this course being chosen instead of
the usual plan of a vertical shaft with enveloping galleries, as
shorter in time and distance, although more dangerous.

On the 6th the sap was pushed forward forty-two feet, and the
parallel carried to the left sixty-nine feet. The mine shaft,
begun the day before, was carried about twenty-seven feet underground,
directly toward the salient. The cavaliers were finished.

During the 7th, although there is no report for that day, the shaft
for the mine under the priest-cap was finished, the chamber itself
excavated and charged with about twelve hundred pounds of powder,
and the mine tamped with sand-bags. The mine on the left had been
ready for some days; it was now charged with fifteen hundred pounds
of powder and tamped.

Heavy thunder-storms, accompanied by warm rain, had been frequent
of late, and the night dews had been at times heavy. Accordingly
it was thought best not to trust so delicate an operation as the
explosion of the mines to the chance of a damp fuse. Daybreak on
the 9th of July having been set as the hour for the simultaneous
explosion of the mines, to be instantly followed by one last rush
through the gaps, Captain Walker was sent on the evening of the
7th, to the _Richmond_ to ask for dry fuses from the magazines of
the Navy.

Meanwhile events were moving rapidly to an end. In the early
morning of Tuesday, the 7th, the gunboat _General Price_ came down
the river bringing the great news that Vicksburg had surrendered
to Grant on the 4th of July. Commodore Palmer, on board the
_Hartford_, was the first to receive the news, but for some reason
it happened that signal communication was obstructed or suspended
between the _Hartford_ and headquarters, so that it was not until
a quarter before eleven that Colonel Kilby Smith, of Grant's staff,
delivered to Banks the welcome message of which he was the bearer.

In less time than it takes to tell, an aide-de-camp was on his way
to the General of the Trenches bearing the brief announcement,
"Vicksburg surrendered on the 4th of July." This note, written
upon the thin manifold paper of the field order-books, the General
of the Trenches was directed to wrap securely around a clod of clay
--the closest approach to a stone to be found in all the lowlands
of Louisiana--and toss it over into the enemy's works. At the same
time the good news was sped by wire a