The Daily Dispatch: March 13, 1863., [Electronic resource]

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The Situation at Port Hudson.

Port Hudson, which is destined to be one of the points of desperate contest in the West, is on the east bank of the Mississippi river, about twenty-five miles above Raton Rouge. It is on a very high and precipitous bluff, the ascent of which, from the river, has to be made by a narrow, up-hill, difficult passage. Yankee accounts say that the position is a very strong and formidable one on the river side; that in addition to the height and perpendicularity of the bluff, the river sweeps past the place with a rapidity of current that would be a serious disadvantage to gun or mortar boats engaged in action. Port Hudson cannot be turned by a cut- off, as the Yankees attempted to turn Vicksburg. The current of the river there bears strongly towards the east bank.

Point Coupes, from which the Yankees are reported to have been driven by our troops, is eight or ten miles above Port Hudson, on the opposite side of the river. Finesses river is an old out- off of the Mississippi, just below Point Coupe, on the same side. Port Hudson has no railroad communication, except with Clinton, a town in the same parish, some fifteen or twenty miles east of it.