It was something to be shown over Fort Pulaski, by the one who had revolutionized gunnery in reducing it. General Gillmore pointed out——by the way, I have neglected to tell what the hero of Pulaski is like. Fancy a fine, wholesome-looking, solid six-footer, with big head, broad, good-humored face, and a high forehead, faintly elongated by a suspicion of baldness, curly brown hair and beard, and a frank, open face, and you have him. A quick-speaking, quick-moving, soldierly man he is, an accomplished engineer, one of the finest practical artillerists in the world, and, withal, a man whose ideas are not limited by the range of his profession, wherein he forms a notable contrast to some other regular officers one might name.
The garrison of Pulaski—apparently a company, with, I believe, a young artillery Captain in command of the post—were on the look-out for the party, and a salute was firing from the barbette guns of the fort before our vessel had rounded to, at the rickety and almost inaccessible wharf. The low, flat ground on which the fort is situated, is grassy and firm as a well-kept lawn; and as the sinking sun, lit up with sloping rays the distant woods and the rippling river, gilded the burst columbiad (which had been set upright over the graves of the soldiers killed in the bombardment, and with its terse inscription, constituted a monument as beautiful as unique,) flashed from the bayonets of the slow-pacing guard on the parapet wall, and brought dimly out beyond the wood the spires of Savannah, one could readily credit the declaration of an engineer officer on General Gillmore’s staff, who had been stationed there for a month or two, that it was the pleasantest place he had found on the whole South Atlantic coast. An hour’s conflict with the mosquitoes, however, would be apt to cause a hasty retraction (and retreat.)
The General led us first around the outer moat to the face fronting Tybee Island, from which he had bombarded it. The breaches have all been thoroughly repaired, but with a different-colored brick; and the pock-marked appearance of the casemates sufficiently attested the efficiency of the fire. Inside the fort there was nothing to see, save that with mosquito-nets, instead of doors and windows, with ample supplies of ice, and by the aid of the thick walls of the fort, our Yankee officers have learned to make garrison duty in the South quite endurable. Beside Sumter and Fisher, Fort Pulaski is contemptible; and the main interest now attaching to the place is, that it taught us, as General Gillmore tersely expresses it, “how any brick or stone fort can be rapidly breached at 1,650 yards distance,” and that, “with guns of my own selection, I would undertake to breach a brick scarp at 2,000 yards.” The fort is now stronger and better every way than when seized by the Rebels; but, as a protection to the harbor of Savannah, against an attack of iron-clads, or the advance of an army, with rifled artillery, it is nearly valueless. Like our other brick and stone forts on the coast, however, it may be made the basis of a powerful defense. Heap up earthworks on the outside, and, so long as its garrison could be provisioned, it would be impregnable.
A sunken vessel lay in the channel, off the fort, and the narrowness Of the passage showed how utterly impossible the fall of Pulaski had made blockade running for Savannah. Realizing the fact, its defenders had taken little pains to keep the river open; and their cribs of logs, firmly bolted together and filled with stones to obstruct the passage of our iron-clads up the stream, had so nearly destroyed the navigation that, even at the time of our visit, after weeks of work in removing them, since the city fell into our hands, our Captain was afraid to attempt the passage in the dark, and we had to lie at anchor, half a mile above Pulaski, all night.
Everybody was awakened, next morning, by the announcement that Jeff. Davis was alongside. If the officer who came hurrying through the cabin to tell it, had said the Prince of Darkness was alongside, in the bodily presence, no one would have been more surprised. Admiral Dahlgren had told us of close watch kept along the west coast of Florida for the fallen Chief, and General Gillmore had, only the day before, been expressing rather faint hopes that, possibly, the vigilance of the land and naval forces in that distant quarter might be rewarded with success. That, in the midst of these expectations, Jeff. Davis should be quietly brought up and lashed alongside our boat, before anybody but the crew was awake, and while we were peacefully steaming up to Savannah, was quite enough to move our special wonder.
The Colonel in charge of the prisoner had been directed to report to General Gillmore, and await orders, which were promptly given. It was thought best, under all the circumstances, that there should be no other intercourse between the boats. The story of the capture, in a semi-female disguise, was fully told by the captor; and so, fresh from this final illustration of the absolute collapse of the rebellion, we landed, in the gray morning, at the Savannah wharves. To our left, across a narrow and rather turbid stream, stretched away to the sea a level marsh, flat as a Western prairie, and green with the lush vegetation of the rice swamp; on the right were rows of fine warehouses, that for four years had known neither paint nor repairs; wharves, through the broken planks of which a careless walker might readily make an unwelcome plunge into not over-cleanly water; and, back of the warehouses, high stone walls, up which, at infrequent intervals, rude staircases conduct the pedestrian to the level of the city proper.
To the Northern reader, Savannah, Charleston, Wilmington, Richmond, have always seemed important names; and while never unconscious that none of them were New York, or Boston, or even Baltimore, yet he has nearly always associated with them the idea of large population, fine architecture and general metropolitan appearance. Nothing better illustrates the pretentious policy of this latitude, which has been always successful in being accepted at its own valuation. Savannah, for example, which is a scattered, tolerably well-built town of twenty thousand inhabitants, about the size of Oswego or Utica, in New York, or Dayton or Columbus, in Ohio, has aspired to be the “metropolis of the South Atlantic coast” and by dint of their perpetual boasts, Georgians had actually succeeded in making us all regard it very nearly as we do Cincinnati, or Chicago, or St. Louis. A Savannah shopkeeper was indignant, beyond description, at a careless remark of mine. I had asked the population of the place, and, on being told, had answered wonderingly, “Why, that isn’t more than a thousand ahead of Lynn, the little town in Massachusetts, where they make shoes and send Henry Wilson to the United States Senate.” The shopkeeper swept off the counter the articles he had been showing me, and, with an air of disdain, said he would like to count profits on goods by the arithmetic Yankees used in estimating the population of their nasty little manufacturing holes.