hat Harding was
surrounded. At 8 P.M. he arrived, and found the Union forces not only
surrounded by overwhelming forces but out of ammunition.

The enemy, not thinking about gunboats, had posted the main body of
his troops in a graveyard at the west end of the town, the left wing
resting in a ravine that led down to the river, thus enabling the
vessels to rake that portion of his line. The gunboats opened fire
simultaneously up the ravine, into the graveyard and upon the valley
beyond. Taken wholly by surprise, the Confederates did not return a
shot, but decamped in haste. Leaving two boats to maintain the fire
through the ravine, Fitch hastened up with the other four to shell the
main road, which, after leaving the upper end of the town, follows
nearly the bank of the stream for some distance. The attacking force
in this case was 4,500 strong, composed of regular Confederate troops
under Generals Wheeler, Forrest, and Wharton. By 11 P.M. they had
disappeared, leaving 140 dead. The garrison, which numbered only 800,
had defended itself gallantly against this overwhelming force since
noon, but was _in extremis_ when the gunboats arrived.

On the 27th of March, Fitch was at Fort Hindman, on the Tennessee,
where he took on board a force of 150 soldiers and went up the river.
On reaching Savanna he heard of a cotton-mill four miles back being
run for the Confederate army. The troops and a force of sailors were
landed and took the mill, although a regiment of the enemy's cavalry
was but two or three miles away. Finding no sure proof of its working
for the army, they did not destroy the building, but removed some of
the essential parts of the machinery. Going on to Chickasaw, south of
the Tennessee line, as the water was too low for the Lexington, he
sent on two light-draughts as far as Florence, where they shelled a
camp of the enemy. The rapid falling of the river obliged them to
return. On the way a quantity of food and live stock belonging to a
noted abettor of guerilla warfare were seized.

Having returned to the mouth of the Cumberland to coal, Fitch received
a telegram on the 3d of April that a convoy had been attacked at
Palmyra, thirty miles above Dover, and the gunboat St. Clair disabled.
He at once got under way, took five light-draughts besides his own
vessel, the Lexington, and went up the river. When he reached Palmyra
he burned every house in the town, as a punishment for the firing on
unarmed vessels and ha