March and April witnessed a material change. Where there had been twenty thousand soldiers in December, there were less than one thousand in April. Where a fleet of gun-boats, mortar-rafts, and transports had been tied to the levees during the winter months, the opening spring showed but a half-dozen steamers of all classes. The transports and the soldiers were up the Tennessee, the mortars were bombarding Island Number Ten, and the gun-boats were on duty where their services were most needed. The journalists had become war correspondents in earnest, and were scattered to the points of greatest interest.
Cairo had become a vast depot of supplies for the armies operating on the Mississippi and its tributaries. The commander of the post was more a forwarding agent than a military officer. The only steamers at the levee were loading for the armies. Cairo was a map of busy, muddy life.
The opening year found Cairo exulting in its deep and all-pervading mud. There was mud everywhere.
Levee, sidewalks, floors, windows, tables, bed-clothing, all were covered with it. On the levee it varied from six to thirty inches in depth. The luckless individual whose duties obliged him to make frequent journeys from the steamboat landing to the principal hotel, became intimately acquainted with its character.
Sad, unfortunate, derided Cairo! Your visitors depart with unpleasant memories. Only your inhabitants, who hold titles to corner lots, speak loudly in your praise. When it rains, and sometimes when it does not, your levee is unpleasant to walk upon. Your sidewalks are dangerous, and your streets are unclean. John Phenix declared you destitute of honesty. Dickens asserted that your physical and moral foundations were insecurely laid. Russell did not praise you, and Trollope uttered much to your discredit. Your musquitos are large, numerous, and hungry. Your atmosphere does not resemble the spicy breezes that blow soft o'er Ceylon's isle. Your energy and enterprise are commendable, and your geographical location is excellent, but you can never become a rival to Saratoga or Newport.
Cairo is built in a basin formed by constructing a levee to inclose the peninsula at the junction of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers. Before the erection of the levee, this peninsula was overflowed by the rise of either river. Sometimes, in unusual floods, the waters reach the top of the embankment, and manage to fill the basin. At the time of my visit, the Ohio was rising rapidly. The inhabitants were alarmed, as the water was gradually gaining upon them. After a time it took possession of the basin, enabling people to navigate the streets and front yards in skiffs, and exchange salutations from house-tops or upper windows. Many were driven from their houses by the flood, and forced to seek shelter elsewhere. In due time the waters receded and the city remained unharmed. It is not true that a steamer was lost in consequence of running against a chimney of the St. Charles Hotel.
Cairo has prospered during the war, and is now making an effort to fill her streets above the high-water level, and insure a dry foundation at all seasons of the year. This once accomplished, Cairo will become a city of no little importance.
Proceeding up the Tennessee, I reached Pittsburg Landing three days after the great battle which has made that locality famous.
The history of that battle has been many times written. Official reports have given the dry details,--the movements of division, brigade, regiment, and battery, all being fully portrayed. A few journalists who witnessed it gave the accounts which were circulated everywhere by the Press. The earliest of these was published by The Herald. The most complete and graphic was that of Mr. Reid, of The Cincinnati Gazette. Officers, soldiers, civilians, all with greater or less experience, wrote what they had heard and seen. So diverse have been the statements, that a general officer who was prominent in the battle, says he sometimes doubts if he was present.
In the official accounts there have been inharmonious deductions, and many statements of a contradictory character. Some of the participants have criticised unfavorably the conduct of others, and a bitterness continuing through and after the war has been the result.