But there was also another fleet at Cairo, and we were informed that we were just in time to see the first essay made at testing the utility of this armada. It consisted of no less than thirty-eight mortar-boats, each of which had cost 1700l. These mortar-boats were broad, flat-bottomed rafts, each constructed with a deck raised three feet above the bottom. They were protected by high iron sides supposed to be proof against rifle-balls, and, when supplied, had been furnished each with a little boat, a rope, and four rough sweeps or oars. They had no other furniture or belongings, and were to be moved either by steam-tugs or by the use of the long oars which were sent with them. It was intended that one 13-inch mortar, of enormous weight, should be put upon each; that these mortars should be fired with twenty-three pounds of powder; and that the shell thrown should, at a distance of three miles, fall with absolute precision into any devoted town which the rebels might hold the river banks. The grandeur of the idea is almost sublime. So large an amount of powder had, I imagine, never then been used for the single charge in any instrument of war; and when we were told that thirty-eight of them were to play at once on a city, and that they could be used with absolute precision, it seemed as though the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah could not be worse than the fate of that city. Could any city be safe when such implements of war were about upon the waters?
But when we came to inspect the mortar-boats, our misgivings as to any future destination for this fleet were relieved; and our admiration was given to the smartness of the contractor who had secured to himself the job of building them. In the first place, they had all leaked till the spaces between the bottoms and the decks were filled with water. This space had been intended for ammunition, but now seemed hardly to be fitted for that purpose.
The officer who was about to test them, by putting a mortar into one and by firing it off with twenty-three pounds of powder, had the water pumped out of a selected raft; and we were towed by a steam-tug, from their moorings a mile up the river, down to the spot where the mortar lay ready to be lifted in by a derrick. But as we turned on the river, the tug-boat which had brought us down was unable to hold us up against the force of the stream. A second tug-boat was at hand; and, with one on each side, we were just able in half an hour to recover the hundred yards which we had lost down the river.
The pressure against the stream was so great, owing partly to the weight of the raft and partly to the fact that its flat head buried itself in the water, that it was almost immovable against the stream, although the mortar was not yet on it.
It soon became manifest that no trial could be made on that day, and so we were obliged to leave Cairo without having witnessed the firing of the great gun. My belief is that very little evil to the enemy will result from those mortar-boats, and that they cannot be used with much effect. Since that time they have been used on the Mississippi, but as yet we do not know with what results. Island No. 10 has been taken; but I do not know that the mortar-boats contributed much to that success. But the enormous cost of moving them against the stream of the river is in itself a barrier to their use. When we saw them--and then they were quite new--many of the rivets were already gone. The small boats had been stolen from some of them, and the ropes and oars from others. There they lay, thirty-eight in number, up against the mud banks of the Ohio, under the boughs of the half-clad, melancholy forest trees, as sad a spectacle of reckless prodigality as the eye ever beheld. But the contractor who made them no doubt was a smart man.
This armada was moored on the Ohio, against the low, reedy bank, a mile above the levee, where the old, unchanged forest of nature came down to the very edge of the river, and mixed itself with the shallow, overflowing waters. I am wrong in saying that it lay under the boughs of the trees, for such trees do not spread themselves out with broad branches. They stand thickly together, broken, stunted, spongy with rot, straight, and ugly, with ragged tops and shattered arms, seemingly decayed, but still ever renewing themselves with the rapid, moist life of luxuriant forest vegetation. Nothing to my eyes is sadder than the monotonous desolation of such scenery. We in England, when we read and speak of the primeval forests of America, are apt to form pictures in our minds of woodland glades, with spreading oaks, and green, mossy turf beneath--of scenes than which nothing that God has given us is more charming. But these forests are not after that fashion; they offer no allurement to the lover, no solace to the melancholy man of thought. The ground is deep with mud or overflown with water. The soil and the river have no defined margins. Each tree, though full of the forms of life, has all the appearance of death. Even to the outward eye they seem to be laden with ague, fever, sudden chills, and pestilential malaria.
When we first visited the spot we were alone, and we walked across from the railway line to the place at which the boats were moored.