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Austrian troops "invested" it by land, and which lay open to the operations of the the English warships blocked the passage by blockade-runners, there were difficulties in sea. The beleaguered Genoese saw the usual their way which were at the outset of the incidents of an old-fashioned blockade. From straggle too lightly estimated. Almost the time to time privateers which lay behind the whole extent of the seaboard was protected little island of Capraja, northeast of Corsica, by a treacherous fringe of low islands, would succeed in eluding all the vigilance of scarcely rising above the surface of the the British squadron and would carry in pro water; the channels between and behind visions enough to prolong for a while the these were winding and intricate; and when desperate resistance of the garrison; at other these obstacles were passed, there still re mained the crucial bar to imperil the entrance times the blockaders would retaliate by "cut ting out a galley" from beneath the very guns to every harbor. of the harbor. One day a gale might drive The conditions of the conflict were new, the jealous sentinels to sea; but on the next and sagacious men foresaw that under them they were back at their old stations, there to the risk df neutral powers being entangled await with patience until pestilence and in disputes with the belligerents was imfamine should bring the city to its door. . mensely' increased. The agency of steam Sixty years later and in another hemisphere was employed for the first time to enforce a the maritime world was to see how far the blockade on a gigantic scale. It was plain new appliances of elaborate science had that a blockading squadron was no longer altered the modes in which blockades were liable to be blown off the port it was watch ing by continued gales; but it was not so easy to be enforced and evaded. to say how far this new motive power would On the 27th of April, 1861, President Lin alter the chances of the blockade-runners. coln issued a proclamation in which the fol The naval power of the Northern States was, lowing announcements appeared: "A com petent force will be posted so as to prevent at the beginning of the war, so small that the the entrance and exit of vessels from the blockade when first instituted was little bet ter than one of those "paper blockades" ports" of the Southern States. "If, there fore, with a view to violate such blockade, which the voice of the International Law had any vessel shall attempt to leave any of the condemned at Paris seven years before; for said ports, she will be duly warned, and if many months, indeed, the trade of the Con she shall again attempt to enter or leave a federacy with Europe was but little affected. It was in view of this that the government blockaded port she will be captured.'' All Europe was prepared to watch this attempt was urged to economize the sea forces and to block up a coast line of 3500 miles against close entrance channels by means of sunken the intrusion of traders whose appetite for hulks. This plan was adopted at Charles gain would be whetted to the keenest point ton and carried out under the superintend by artificially raised prices. Already, indeed, ence of an officer whose aim was "to estab the scheme had been ridiculed as a material lish a combination of artificial interruptions impossibility by European statesmen, who and irregularities resembling on a small pointed out the fact that not one of all of the scale those of Hell-gate, that rock which so blockades established during the preceding long impeded the navigation of New York seventy-five years had succeeded in excluding harbor. In Europe both military critics and cham trade even where the coast to be watched bers of commerce protested against this was comparatively limited. But as a set-off method of making good a blockade; but the against the long and broken sketch of coast