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might be induced to take the line of the Coldwater and Tallahatchie, as to flood the country around the fort, The cut, however, did not prove large enough to produce this effect.1
The rebels meanwhile had made haste to avail themselves of the delay occasioned by the lack of transportation for McPherson's corps, and Grant was informed that they were hurrying troops from Vicksburg, over their shorter lines, to Greenwood.
In order to relieve Ross, who was now in imminent danger of being surrounded, isolated as he was, away off in this tangled network of forest and bayou, Grant devised still another scheme.
This was to hem in the enemy on the Yazoo, by sending a force along another of these labyrinthine routes, that leaves the Yazoo river below Haine's bluff, and, after innumerable windings, renters the same stream sixty miles above that point, and in the rear of Greenwood.
The route was by way of the Yazoo river to Steele's bayou, up the latter to Black bayou, through that to Deer creek, and along Deer creek to the Rolling Fork; thence, across to the Big Sunflower, and down the Sunflower to the Yazoo; in all, about a hundred and fifty miles. On the 14th of March, Admiral Porter made a reconnoissance of these streams, as far as Deer creek, and informed Grant that, up to the limit of exploration, they were navigable for the
1 There is a discrepancy between some of the statements made by subordinate army and navy officers about the Yazoo pass expedition. Each arm of the service blamed the other for delays and mishaps, for which, perhaps, neither was fairly blamable. The difficulties were prodigious, and sufficiently account for the failure of the expedition, without attributing it to a lack of energy, much less of earnestness or courage in any concerned. When accounts differ, I have adopted the statements which seemed to me best authenticated.
New York Appleton 1885.
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