sledge-hammers, indenting the sheets, starting the fastenings, breaking the tough bolts. The Cincinnati receives thirty-one shots, the Essex fifteen, the St. Louis seven, and the Carondelet six.

Though struck so often, they move on. The distance lessens. Another gun is knocked from its carriage in the fort; another-another. There are signs that the contest is about over. But a shot strikes the Essex between the iron plates; it tears through the oaken timbers and into one of the steam-boilers. There is a great puff of steam; it pours from the port-holes, and the boat is enveloped in a cloud. She drops out of the line of battle. Her engines stop, and she floats with the stream. Twenty-eight of her crew are scalded, among them her brave commander, Captain Porter.

The Confederates take courage. They spring to their guns, and fire rapidly but wildly, hoping and expecting to disable the rest of the fleet. But Commodore Foote does not falter; he keeps straight on as if nothing had happened. A shell from the Cincinnati dismounts a gun, killing or wounding every gunner. The boats are so near that every shot is sure to do its work. The fire of the boats increases, while the fire of the fort diminishes. Coolness, determination, energy, perseverance, and power win the day. The Confederate flag comes down, and a white flag goes up. Cheers ring through the fleet. A boat puts out from the St. Louis. An officer jumps ashore, climbs the torn embankment, stands upon the parapet, and raises the Stars and Stripes.

Thus, in an hour and twelve minutes, the fort which the Confederates confidently expected would prevent the gunboats from ascending the river was forced to surrender, and there was unobstructed water communication to the very heart of the Confederacy. The line of defence was again broken.

There was but little loss of life in this engagement-twenty to thirty killed and wounded on each side.

Up the river steamed the gunboats, capturing the nearly completed Confederate gunboat Eastport. During the preceding months the Confederates have partly altered an old river steamboat into a gunboat. They had built it up with thick timber, and partly plated it with iron; but suddenly they cut the steam-pipes, chopped holes in the bottom, and fled to the woods. On the Union side during these months the men of the ironmills, the carpenters of St. Louis and Cincinnati, had constructed the gunboats, and there they were, making their way up the Tennessee to the border of Alabama.

Although Governor Harris, of Tennessee, and his fellow-confederates

have voted the State out of the Union; although the great mass of the people in western Tennessee are for the Confederacy, there are those who swing their hats and give a cheer, with the tears rolling down their cheeks, when they behold once more the dear old flag floating from the flag-staffs of the gunboats.

With consternation General Albert Sidney Johnston, at Bowling Green, read the message that came to him announcing the surrender of Fort Henry. Through the months his troops had been digging trenches, throwing up breast works in front of the Union army under General Buell, but now it was lost labor. He must make a quick retreat, or General Grant with a great army would be in his rear. Johnston had twelve thousand men; Buell a much larger force, and was getting ready to advance.

There was a sudden commotion, a packing up of baggage, loading it into the cars and in wagons-barrels of flour, beef, pork, tents, cannon, ammunition. They set fire to buildings containing thousands of bushels of corn. In the engine-house of the railroad were six engines laid up for repairs. They piled wood around them and set it on fire and hastened away. The work of destruction of material forces had begun in the Confederacy.

On the morning of February 14th, General Mitchell's division of Union troops marched into Bowling Green. Mitchell looked at the locomotives. "It will not take long to repair them," he said.

It was the difference between the North and the South. A few days later and the engines were running. Labor was winning its victories.

It is twelve miles from Fort Henry to Fort Donelson. There are two roads, which wind through the forest, with here and there a farm-house. The soil is not very fertile, and the farmers do not raise much corn; but the oak-trees in the fall of the year are full of acorns, and the farmers keep large herds of pigs, which roam the woods, feeding upon the nuts.

Out from Fort Henry marched the troops under General Grant— McClernand's and Smith's divisions-leaving General Lew. Wallace's division to hold that fort. The baggage-wagons had not arrived from Cairo, and the soldiers carried three days' rations of bread and meat in their haversacks. They bivouacked at night beside a brook, and kindled great fires, shooting the pigs and roasting them by the glowing coals. They sang songs, shouted, danced, told stories till the drums beat the tattoo; then they scraped the dead leaves into heaps for a bed, wrapped themselves in their blankets, and lay down to sleep.

While the Union army is working its way towards the Cumberland River, let us go in advance and look at Fort Donelson.

We see the town of Dover located where the river runs north-west,

and then bends north. The ground rises fifty feet above the water; the stores and dwellings are on the hill-side.

Low down we see a bank of fresh earth, and higher up a second line of works, and seventeen cannon peeping from the embrasures-most of them thirty-two pounders-all pointing down the river. Those in the upper work are so high that they will pour a plunging fire upon the gunboats when they steam up the river, while Admiral Foote will find that if he approaches near the fort he will not be able to elevate the muzzles of his cannon sufficiently high to do any damage.

From the south-west corner of the fort a line of breast works runs. south along the crest of a ridge. Following it a mile, we come to a deepravine, with a creek flowing through it; crossing the creek, we follow the line, now bending east another mile to Lick Creek, which flows north to the river, and which is too deep to be forded.

The fortifications consist of three distinct parts-the water batteries and fort, the line of breastworks, and beyond them a line of rifle-pits and abatis.

The rifle-pits are built of logs. There is a space between the upper log and the one beneath it, behind which the Confederate riflemen can lie and pick off the Union troops. The country beyond is broken into ridges and hills covered with forests.

At midnight on the day of the loss of Fort Henry the Confederate troops from that fort, under Colonel Heiman, reach Fort Donelson. Troops arrive from Nashville, sent by General Johnston. General Gideon J. Pillow arrives on the 9th. He had served in the Mexican War. It was said