Until toward the end of June, the _Polk_ and _Livingston_, the last vestiges of the Confederate navy on the Mississippi spared from the general wreck at Memphis, lay far up the Yazoo River, with a barrier above them, designed to cover the building of the ram _Arkansas_. This formidable craft was approaching completion at Yazoo City. The Ellets, uncle and nephew, with the _Monarch_ and _Lancaster_, steamed up the Yazoo River to reconnoitre. The rams carried no armament whatever, but this the Confederate naval commander in the Yazoo did not know; so, unable to pass the barrier, he set fire to his three gunboats immediately on perceiving Ellet's approach. On the 14th of July, Flag-Officers Farragut and Davis sent the gunboats _Carondelet_ and _Tyler_, and the ram _Queen of the West_, on a second expedition up the Yazoo to gain information of the _Arkansas_. This object was greatly facilitated by the fact that the _Arkansas_ had at this very moment just got under way for the first time, and was coming down the Yazoo to gather information of the Federal fleet. The _Arkansas_, which had been constructed and was now commanded by Captain Isaac N. Brown, formerly of the United States Navy, was, for defensive purposes, probably the most effective of all the gunboats ever set afloat by the Confederacy upon the western waters. Her deck was covered by a single casemate protected by three inches of railroad iron, set aslant like a gable roof, and heavily backed up with timber and cotton bales. Her whole bow formed a powerful ram; the shield, flat on the top, was pierced for ten guns of heavy calibre, three in each broadside, two forward, and two aft. Had her means of propulsion proved equal to her power of attack and defence, it is doubtful if the whole Union navy on the Mississippi could have stood against her single-handed. The situation thus strangely recalls that presented by the _Merrimac_, or _Virginia_, in Hampton Roads before the opportune arrival of the _Monitor_. On board the _Tyler_ was a detachment of twenty sharpshooters of the 4th Wisconsin regiment, under Captain J. W. Lynn, and on the _Carondelet_ were twenty men of the 30th Massachusetts regiment, under Lieutenant E. A. Fiske. About six miles above the Yazoo the Union gunboats encountered the _Arkansas_. The unarmed ram _Queen of the West_ promptly fled. After a hard fight the _Carondelet_ was disabled and run ashore, and the _Tyler_ was forced to retire, with the _Arkansas_ in pursuit. The sharpshooters of the 4th Wisconsin suffered more severely than if they had been engaged in an ordinary pitched battle, Captain Lynn and six of his men being killed and six others wounded.