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Cut off from direct communication by the sudden appearance of the enemy on the 12th, the three mounted companies east of the Atchafalaya were forced to cross at Morgan's Ferry, below Simmsport, and did not rejoin Walker until the 15th.
General Mower's division was landed near the outlet of the Atchafalaya, marched up by land and captured the fort below Alexandria known as Fort De Russy, and the whole fleet then proceeded up to Alexandria, reaching it on the day appointed, viz., March 17th, where it waited for the arrival of General Banks, who, however, did not come till some days after.
This, while the Atchafalaya was high and the eastern lowlands of the Attakapas widely overflowed, might have been safely done, but all these plans were destined to be essentially modified by a series of unexpected events in widely different quarters.
The gunboats Estrella and Arizona and the ram Switzerland stayed in the river off Alexandria until noon of the 17th to cover Weitzel's withdrawal, and then dropped down to the mouth of Red River and the head of the Atchafalaya. The Confederates slowly followed Weitzel at some distance, observing his movements, and, on the morning of the 20th, attacked his pickets.
With the Hartford and Albatross controlling the reach between Port Hudson and Vicksburg, as well as the mouth of the Red River and the head of the Atchafalaya, Banks might now safely disregard the movements of the Confederate gunboats. Accordingly, while waiting for Grant's answer, he turned to the execution of his former plan.
Moreover, a thorough reconnoissance showed the whole country, between the Mississippi and the Atchafalaya above the Plaquemine, to be impracticable at that season for all arms. After more than a month of this sort of work, Emory was called across the river to Baton Rouge to take part in the events narrated in the last chapter.
At three o'clock on the morning of the 13th of January the crossing of Berwick Bay began; by half-past ten the gunboats had completed the ferriage of the cavalry and artillery; the infantry following landed at Pattersonville; then the whole force formed in line and, moving forward in the afternoon to the junction of the Teche with the Atchafalaya, went into bivouac.
She also told me, when we were talking of mottoes for seals and rings, that she had had engraved on a ring she always wore the name of that miserable bayou of the Mississippi Atchafalaya where Gabriel passes near one side of an island, while Evangeline, in her woe-begone search, is lying asleep on the other; and that, to her surprise, she found that the King of the Belgians wore a ring on which he had had the same word engraved, as an expression of the bitterest and most hopeless disappointment.
At the lower end of Lake Des Allemands passed the only line of railway in southern Louisiana, from a point on the west bank of the river opposite New Orleans to Berwick's Bay, eighty miles. Berwick's Bay, which is but the Atchafalaya after it issues from Grand Lake, is eight hundred yards wide, with great depth of water, and soon meets the Gulf in Atchafalaya Bay.
Beside his own vessels, Porter brought with him to Alexandria the Estrella and Arizona from the flotilla that had been operating on the Atchafalaya under Cooke.
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