As I hurried along the reaches of the river, every island cut-off, every tow-head, and every nigger-head, was inspected.  I even peered into the mouths of dark bayous, thinking the party might have tied up to await my arrival, as the larger and deeper craft floated faster than my little boat.  All search, however, proved fruitless.  No flat could be seen.  My endeavors to find my quondam friends had been so absorbing that things above my line of vision were not observed, when suddenly the bright moonlight revealed to my astonished eyes a lofty city apparently suspended in the heavens.  By the aid of a candle and my map I discovered that the city and fortifications of Vicksburgh were close at hand, and that it was four o’clock in the morning.

My first view of Vicksburgh was over a long, low point of land, across the base of which was excavated, during the investment of the city by United States troops in the late war, “General Grant’s Cut-off.”  By using this cut-off, light-draught gunboats could ascend or descend the river without passing near the batteries of the fortified city.  This point, or peninsula, which the Union forces held, is on the Louisiana shore, opposite Vicksburgh.  A year or two after I passed that interesting locality, a Natchez newspaper, in describing the change made in the channel of the Mississippi River, said that “St. Joseph and Rodney have been left inland; Vicksburgh is left on a lake; Delta will soon be washed away; a cut-off has been made at Grand Gulf, and by another season Port Gibson and Claiborne County will have no landing.”

Floating quietly in my little boat, and gazing at the city upon the heights, I thought of the bloody scenes there enacted, and of the statement made that “three hundred tons of lead, mostly bullets, had been collected in and around the town since the close of the war.”  This lead, it has been asserted, would make nine million six hundred thousand ounce-balls.  Of course, in this statement there is no mention of the lead buried deep in the earth, and that lost in the river.

Entering a great bend, the swift current swept me so rapidly past Vicksburgh that a few moments later I was among the islands and tow-heads of the river.  At noon the plantation of Mr. Jefferson Davis was passed.  It was situated twenty-five miles below Vicksburgh, and prior to February, 1867, was on a long peninsula with the estate of Colonel Joseph E. Davis and one belonging to Messrs. Quitman and Farrar.  Then came the overwhelming river, sweeping across a narrow neck of land, and transforming the cotton-plantations into an island territory.  In the old days of slavery, Colonel Joseph E. Davis, brother of the ex-president of the late Confederate States, had a body-servant named Ben Montgomery.  He was the manager of his master’s estates while a slave, and was so industrious and honest in all his dealings, and so successful in business, that after the war he was able to purchase his master’s plantation for three hundred and fifty thousand dollars in gold.