“The dwelling was palatial in its proportions and architecture, and the grounds around it were magnificently laid out in alcoves, with arbors, trellises, groves of evergreens, and extensive flower-beds. All was now a mass of smouldering ruins. Our gunboats had gone up there the day before, and a small battery planted near the mansion announced itself by plugging away at one of the iron-clads, and the marines went ashore after the gunboats had silenced the battery, and burned and destroyed every thing on the place. If any thing were wanting to complete the desolate aspect of the place, it was to be found in the sombre-hued pendant moss, peculiar to Southern forests, and which gives the trees a funereal aspect, as if they were all draped in mourning. As on almost every Southern plantation, there were many deadened trees standing about in the fields, from the limbs of all of which long festoons of moss hung, swaying with a melancholy motion in every breeze. “The weather, since the starting out of the fleet, had, up to this time, been very fine; but as evening now approached, a heavy rain commenced, which, from the appearance of things, bid fair to continue for an indefinite period. The Yazoo River was low, and the banks steep and about thirty feet high. Along the edge of the water, and reaching to the foot of the bank, is a dense undergrowth of willows, briers, thorns, vines, and live oaks, twined together in a most disagreeably promiscuous manner. To effect a landing of the troops and trains, a way had to be cut through this entanglement, from every boat, and this caused such a delay that it was quite dark before all the troops were got on shore. Tents were pitched for the night, pickets sent out, and the army encamped, anxiously awaiting the dawn of the next day.” That General Grant would fail to communicate with him, General Sherman could not know. He carried out his part of the great programme, and steadily advanced in accordance with its provisions for united action. In this profound ignorance of the occasion of the failure, he prepared to move upon Vicksburg. CHAPTER XIII. The March—The City—Preparations for an Assault—The Attack—The Abatis and Rifle-pits—The Charge upon the Hill—Sherman succeeded by McClernand—General Sherman’s Farewell Order— Result of the Expedition.