General Pope immediately sent to Cairo for four light-draught steamers, and tools, implements, and supplies needed to cut a navigable way. Colonel Bissell was at once ordered to set his entire command at work, and to call upon the land force on the fleet for aid if needed. For six miles Bissell had to cut through the forest a channel fifty feet wide and four and a half feet deep. Sawing through the trunks of large trees four and a half feet under the surface of the cold water was a work of extreme toil and great exposure. The trees when felled had to be disentangled, cut up, and thrust among the standing trees. Overhanging boughs of trees, growing outside the channel, had to be lopped off. Shallow places were excavated. The whole had to be done from the decks of the little working-boats, or by men standing in the water. The men were urged to incessant labor; yet they toiled with such ardor that urging was not needed. General Halleck telegraphed to Pope, Friday, March 21st, that he would not hamper him with any minute instructions, but would leave him to accomplish the object according to his own judgment, and added: "Buell will be with Grant and Smith by Monday." In nineteen days, April 4th, the way was open and clear; and on the 5th, steamers and barges were brought through near to the lower mouth, but not near enough to be in view from the river. The Confederate officers on the island were aware of the attempt to secure this cut-off across the peninsula. Captain Gray, engineer, in a report or memorandum, dated March 29th, spoke of "the canal being cut by the enemy," and of heavy guns planted to be used against any boat that might issue from the bayou, as well as batteries erected along the shore, from about a mile and a half below New Madrid down to Tiptonville. But General McCown, when turning over the command to General W.W. Mackall, who relieved him on March 31st, said to him that the National troops were endeavoring to cut a canal across the peninsula, but they would fail, and that Mackall would find the position safe until the river fell, but no longer.