column as near the levee as possible, and under screen of the buildings of the two plantations, Bienvenu's and Chalmette's, intervening between him and the American line; Gibbs hugged the woods on the right. The Ninety-fifth extended across the field, in skirmishing order, meeting Keane's men on their right. Pakenham, with his staff and a guard composed of the 14th Dragoons, rode in the centre of the line so as to command a view of both columns. Just as Keane's column passed the Bienvenu buildings, the Chalmette buildings were blown up, and then the general saw, through his glasses, the mouths of Jackson's large cannon completely covering his column, and these guns, as our authority states, were manned as guns are not often manned on land. Around one of the twenty-four pounders stood a band of red-shirted, bewhiskered, desperate-looking men, begrimed with smoke and mud; they were the Baratarians, who had answered Jackson's orders by running in all the way from their fort on Bayou St. John that morning. The other battery was in charge of the practised crew of the destroyed "Carolina." Preceded by a shower of rockets, and covered by the fire from their artillery in front and their battery on the levee, the British army advanced, solid, cool, steady, beautiful in the rhythm of their step and the glitter of their uniforms and equipments, moving as if on dress parade,—to the Americans a display of the beauty and majesty of power such as they had never seen.
The great guns of the Baratarians and of the crew of the "Carolina" and those of the "Louisiana" flashed forth almost simultaneously, and all struck full in the scarlet ranks. The havoc was terrible. For a time
