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The spring is now here, and soon these streams will be no serious obstacle, save in the ambuscades of the forest, and whatever works the enemy may have erected at or near Grenada. North Mississippi is too valuable for us to allow the enemy to hold it and make crops this year.
The preparations were necessarily hasty in the extreme, but this was the essence of the whole plan, viz., to reach Vicksburg as it were by surprise, while General Grant held in check Pemberton's army about Grenada, leaving me to contend only with the smaller garrison of Vicksburg and its well-known strong batteries and defenses.
A few days before the surrender of Vicksburg, General Grant, in conversation with some friends, referred to his position in Mississippi, six months before. Had he pressed forward beyond Grenada, he would have been caught in midwinter in a sea of mud, where the safety of his army might have been endangered.
The manufacture of claying or refining sugar, accordingly, though it has flourished in all the sugar colonies of France, has been little cultivated in any of those of England, except for the market of the colonies themselves. While Grenada was in the hands of the French, there was a refinery of sugar, by claying, at least upon almost every plantation.
I have antedated this little episode delightful for more reasons than I set down here because I do not wish to trouble my readers with two descriptions of the same island and those mere passing glimpses. There are two craters, I should say, in Grenada, beside the harbour.
During my residence in Grenada my duties were neither arduous nor difficult. Had I complied with the advice of friends and remained, I might have succeeded as a planter, and led for a number of years a lazy, monotonous, vegetative kind of life. Nevertheless, my stay was not unproductive of advantages.
Neither of these three obstacles is to be feared with experienced Indian pilots. I dwell on these hydrographic details because a great political and commercial interest is now connected with the communications between Angostura and the banks of the Meta and the Apure, two rivers that lead to the eastern side of the Cordilleras of New Grenada.
The first and above all the most celebrated enterprises attempted in search of El Dorado were directed toward the eastern back of the Andes of New Grenada.
At Grenada the chosen objective was the possession of a piece of territory of no great military value; for it must be remarked that all these smaller Antilles, if held in force at all, multiplied large detachments, whose mutual support depended wholly upon the navy.
The strong place of Algeziras, the bulwark of Grenada, and the magazine in which was deposited the necessary supplies received by that kingdom from Africa, was besieged by the Castilians A.D. 1342, Heg. 742. Several French, English, and Navarrois cavaliers resorted on this occasion to the camp of the beleaguering army.
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