He had a premonition that they were the men more than any others who would achieve the success of the Union, if it were achieved at all.

They had dismounted and stood side by side, the figure of Grant short, thick and sturdy, that of Sherman, taller and more slender.

They spoke only at intervals, and few words then, but nothing in the country about them escaped their attention.
Dick had glasses of his own, and he, too, began to look.

He saw a region much wooded and cut by deep streams.

Before them lay the sluggish waters of Chickasaw Bayou, where Sherman had sustained a severe defeat at an earlier time, and farther away flowed the deep, muddy Yazoo.
"See the smoke, George, rising above that line of trees along the river ?" said Dick.
"Yes, Dick," replied Warner, "and I notice that the smoke rises in puffs." "It has a right to go up that way, because it's expelled violently from the smoke-stacks of steamers.