There was, moreover, a great prejudice against, or lack of appreciation of this undeveloped system of defence, entertained by the officials of the new Confederacy into whose hands the defence of the South had fallen.
Finally, after a year had passed in futile efforts to impress the Confederate authorities with the importance, value, and economy of mining passes and channel-ways with magazines, to be sprung at will by means of the electric spark, Maury procured, in the summer of 1862, two barrels of powder from the Governor of Virginia, who was himself in favour of the plan, and prevailed on the Secretary of the Navy, and the Chairman of the Committee of Naval Affairs in the Congress of the Confederate States, to go down the river and see him explode powder, by an ingenious contrivance, under water.
Two magnificent jets went up; and when the two gentlemen heard the report of a barrel of powder, and saw the water pagodas rising up some hundred feet in the air, they were convinced. The next day $50,000 were placed at the service of Commander Maury (for he now held this rank in the Navy of the Confederate States) for mining the James River.
Still powder was scarce, wire scarcer, and of gutta-percha and india-rubber there was absolutely none, except such as might be collected by calling upon the patriotic women of that noble old State for their india-rubber over-shoes; but, by a remarkable coincidence, it happened that the enemy, in attempting to lay a submarine cable across Chesapeake Bay, from Fortress Munroe to Eastville, had been forced to abandon the attempt and had left the wire to the mercy of the waves.
Maury had the good fortune to secure the prize; it was much cut up and broken by chafing on the rocks, but it was better than anything of the sort that could be made out of old
