“The enemy having made no attempt to carry off our heavy guns, which we abandoned to their fate,” continued Gleig, “it was judged advisable to bring them into the camp as soon as circumstances would allow; and for this purpose working parties were again sent out as soon as the darkness screened them. It was my fortune to accompany them. The labor of dragging a number of huge ship’s guns out of the soft soil into which they had sunk, crippled too as most of them were in their carriages, was more extreme by far than any one expected to find it. Indeed, it was not till four o’clock in the morning that our task came to a conclusion, and even then it had been very imperfectly performed. Five guns were eventually left behind. These were rendered useless, it is true, by breaking their trunnions; but it cannot be said that in the course of the late operations the British army came off without the loss of some of its artillery.” [Illustration: PLAN OF THE ATTACK AND DEFENCE OF THE AMERICAN LINES Below New Orleans, on the 8th January, 1815. By MAJOR A. LACARRIERE LATOUR, principal Engineer 7th Military District, U. S. Army, 1815. STRUTHERS & CO., ENGR’S, N. Y.] CHAPTER XIV. EFFECTUALLY stopped by these repeated miscarriages, General Pakenham, with fully five thousand good soldiers at his command, decided to wait an entire week for Major-General Lambert, who was then on his way with two fresh regiments. In the meanwhile Pakenham adopted a suggestion made first by Vice-Admiral Cochrane,[548] to prepare for throwing a force across the river to turn Jackson’s line from the opposite bank. The plan required that the Villeré canal should be extended through the levee to the river without the knowledge of the Americans. Perhaps Pakenham would have done better by dragging his boats across the intervening space; but he preferred to dig a canal, and the work, begun January 4, was done so successfully that until January 6, when it was completed, Jackson did not suspect the movement. On the same day Lambert’s division arrived.