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At the end of October, Coffee, now a general officer, with nearly three thousand Tennesseans, reached the neighborhood of Mobile. With these, and about a thousand of the regulars he had already, Jackson promptly marched on Pensacola. One of the forts, and the city itself, he took; the other fort, Barrancas, was blown up by the British before he could reach it. The enterprise kept him but a week.
If he could say that of Spain's bare sierras and bleak barrancas, what would he not have said of this land, whose splendid woods and forests clothe the hills and fill the glens with verdure.
On the other side of the bay Fort Barrancas kept up its fire at long intervals, and Fort Pickens could not reply without the danger of putting a shot into the Teaser after her recent reformation. The steamer kept on her course at half speed; but in ten minutes the sound of the drum fell astern of her, when the drummer could go no farther. "Heave over the wheel, Beeks," said Christy.
On the 12th Fort Marion, the coast surveying schooner "Dana," the Arsenal at St. Augustine, and that on the Chattahoochee, with 500,000 musket cartridges, 300,000 rifle cartridges and 50,000 pounds of powder, having previously been seized Forts Barrancas and McRae, and the Navy Yard at Pensacola, were taken by Rebel troops of Florida, Alabama and Mississippi.
And for this he can scarcely be blamed, since his situation demanded vigorous and rapid measures, before they could be indorsed by the Secretary of War. Pensacola, at the end of a beautiful bay, ten miles from the sea, with a fine harbor, was defended by Fort Barrancas, six miles from the town.
It was constructed to turn the course of a little stream which, in times of flood, has frequently done damage to the town. From here, our trail led us on through the sandy pine-scrub, broken now and then by narrow gullies, called barrancas, with almost vertical sides. In every case, we were obliged to descend into these gullies and climb out upon the other side.
It is sweet and rich, with a little twang, as if fermented, and people in the district call it honey-wine. Three quarters of an hour brought us to San Francisco, though we had to go down and up two large barrancas before we reached the town. It was almost sunset when we arrived. Sitting down before the town-house, we sent for the agente.
The upheaval, having occurred here earlier than at Santa Fe, may be naturally accounted for by the contemporaneous volcanic action. At the Barrancas de S. Gregorio, the Pampean deposit, as we have seen, overlies and fills up furrows in coarse sand, precisely like that now accumulating on the shores near the mouth of the Plata.
We found many cross roads, broad and straight, cut through the woods, and were impressed by the great number of dry barrancas into which we had to descend, and out of which we had to climb. Most of these were actually dry, but many of them contained a dirty pool of stagnant water. At many places, the road was bordered with plants, the leaves of which somewhat resembled those of the pineapple.
When morning broke they found themselves fairly "in the trap." "Above and below, the valley was choked up with snow five fathoms deep. Vast fissures barrancas were filled with the drift; and it was perilous to attempt penetrating in either direction. Two men had already disappeared. "On each side of our camp rose the walls of the canon, almost vertical, to the height of a hundred feet.
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