attempt to escalade.  Another plan, not in general favor, was to smoke Anderson out by means of a raft covered with burning mixtures of a chemical and bad-smelling nature.  Still another, with perhaps yet fewer adherents, was to advance on all sides in such a vast number of row-boats that the fort could not sink them all, whereupon the survivors should land on the wharf and proceed to take such further measures as might be deemed expedient.  The volunteers from the country always arrived full of faith and defiance.  “We want to get a squint at that Fort Sumter,” they would say to their city friends.  “We are going to take it.  If we don’t plant the palmetto on it, it’s because there’s no such tree as the palmetto.”  Down the harbor they would go in the ferry-boats to Morris or Sullivan’s Island.  The spy-glass would be brought out, and one after another would peer through it at the object of their enmity.  Some could not sight it at all, confounded the instrument, and fell back on their natural vision.  Others, more lucky, or better versed in telescopic observations, got a view of the fortress, and perhaps burst out swearing at the evident massiveness of the walls and the size of the columbiads.

“Good Lord, what a gun!” exclaimed one man.  “D’ye see that gun?  What an almighty thing!  I’ll be ——­, if I ever put my head in front of it!”

The difficulties of assault were admitted to be very great, considering the bad footing, the height of the ramparts, and the abundant store of muskets and grenades in the garrison.  As to breaches, nobody seemed to know whether they could be made or not.  The besieging batteries were neither heavy nor near, nor could they be advanced as is usual in regular sieges, nor had they any advantage over the defence except in the number of gunners, while in regard to position and calibre they were inferior.  To knock down a wall nearly forty feet high and fourteen feet thick at a distance of more than half a mile seemed a tough undertaking, even when unresisted.  It was discovered also that the side of the fortification towards Fort Johnstone, its only weak point, had been strengthened so as to make it bomb-proof by means of interior masonry constructed from the stones of the landing-place.  Then nobody wanted to knock Fort Sumter down, inasmuch as that involved either the labor of building it up again, or the necessity of going without it as a harbor-defence.  Finally, suppose it should be attacked and not taken?  Really, we unlearned people in the art of war were vastly puzzled as we thought tins whole matter over, and we sometimes doubted whether our superiors were not almost equally bothered with ourselves.

This fighting was a sober, sad subject; and yet at times it took a turn toward the ludicrous.  A gentleman told me that he was present when the steamer Marion was seized with the intention of using her in pursuing the Star of the West.  A vehement dispute arose as to the fitness of the vessel for military service.