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[538] them by falling back on Grand Écore after his orders to meet near Mansfield was not the less dangerous.

Porter and Smith, in fact, had been on time at the rendezvous. After laborious navigation they had reached on the afternoon of the 10th the mouth of Loggy Bayou. A detachment of infantry had been landed immediately, and the rest of the force was preparing to follow it, while the crew was busy in removing from the channel of Red River the hull of a foundered vessel, when the officer bearing Banks' despatches reached the fleet. There was not a moment to lose in getting back to Grand Écore. If Taylor's advice had been listened to, two divisions of infantry, with a large force of artillery, would have been posted the next day on the bluffs of Red River, and would have made this retreat impossible. Luckily for the Union troops, the only annoyance he could give their fleet was by means of detachments of cavalry. On the morning of the 11th he sent Bagby from Mansfield to Grand Bayou Landing with his cavalry and a battery of artillery, who, delayed in crossing Bayou Pierre, reached the banks of Red River several hours too late, when the fleet was already down the stream. He followed it in vain, and in spite of all his efforts did not succeed in overtaking it. Green, for his part, leaving Bee on the road to Grand Écore, remained himself at Pleasant Hill. On the 11th he received orders to go to Blair's Landing to await the passage of the fleet there. He started that evening, but, encountering Bayou Pierre, with its width of nearly three hundred feet, he was delayed as Bagby was, and, though advised of the approach of the enemy's vessels, all he could take on the 12th to await them on the banks of the river were three cannon and a hundred men. Taylor blamed his chief for having caused this delay, in that he left the pontons of the army at Shreveport. But it would have sufficed to avoid it had Kirby Smith given the order to march twenty-four hours earlier.

In the mean time, the Federal fleet moved down Red River in the face of the greatest difficulties. In this river, with its windings and its frequent shoals, the helm was so crippled by the current as to render its navigation downward more dangerous than it had been upward. Every minute it became necessary to stop and raise one sunken vessel or to steer clear of another; at one time the

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