Nearly 3,000 troops were landed, with General Weitzel in command. They captured a couple of little outworks three miles north of the landing place, and then advanced with skirmishers. One of the skirmishers captured a flag from one point on the parapet, and another passed through the sally-port, bayoneted a man on a horse inside, and captured the horse. Weitzel says (see “Butler’s Book”) that he was within 600 yards of the fort, and from a sand-dune examined the work carefully. Butler ran down the beach in a shoal-draft transport, and at a range of 500 yards, as he says, looked at the fort for himself. He continues: “I there met General Weitzel returning from a reconnoissance. He stated to me that he had been out to the front line, and had seen Fort Fisher. As a defensive work the fort was uninjured.” He continues: “I said to Colonel Comstock, who was on board with me [Butler did not land], ‘jump into a boat with General Weitzel, pull ashore and examine with him and report to me if an assault is feasible; _to me it does not look so_, but I am unwilling to give it up.’” This is from “Butler’s Book,” page 794. Being so primed by Butler, Comstock reported an assault not feasible, and Butler wrote to Admiral Porter that night as follows: “Upon landing the troops and making a thorough reconnoissance of Fort Fisher, both General Weitzel and myself are fully of the opinion that the place could not be carried by assault, as it was left substantially uninjured as a defensive work by the navy fire. We found seventeen guns protected by traverses, two only of which were dismounted, bearing up the beach, and covering a strip of land, the only practicable route, not more than wide enough for a thousand men in line of battle.... I shall therefore sail for Hampton Roads as soon as the transport fleet can be got in order.” By Confederate reports it appears that the fort was garrisoned by “900 veterans, sixty C. S. N. sailors and marines and 450 junior reserves between sixteen and eighteen years of age.” On December 24th three guns had been disabled in the fort, and on the 25th five others were disabled. Two more had exploded. Including howitzers, the fort had left thirty-four guns, of which twenty pointed up the beach toward an assaulting column. There were also some torpedoes planted in the sand, and a very good line of palisades “made of heavy timber pointed on top.” But for the delay due to the wild powder-boat scheme, the Confederates would have been caught with only 667 men in the fort, according to General Whiting, who commanded the Confederate forces of the Wilmington district. Whiting wrote that he believed an assault on Christmas day would have failed. In his official report he said of the fort: “The delay due to the heavy weather of Wednesday and Thursday after the arrival of the fleet was its salvation.”