The Cairo Dispatch man of the Chicago Tribune gives the following incident in lieu of news:
The Provost Marshal of this post has lately done a big thing in the way of ridding the town of hosts of disreputable females who daily and nightly throng our streets. There was a floating craft somewhere in the upper portion of town, near Stone Depot, tied to a tree some dozen rods or more from the levee, occupied as a brothel, into which were congregated a crowd of abandoned females with their no less abandoned male associates. Despairing of ridding the town of their presence by a legitimate method, a Provost Marshal guard last night cut the rope, and towing them out into the current cast loose and started them down to Dixie to delight the first families of Chivalrydom. When last heard from they were gaily floating down the broad Mississippi, nine miles below Columbus. They had hoisted the flag (a white petticoat), and if they escape the dangers of the flotilla, and succeed in eluding the vigilance of the artillery men at Fort Pillow and the rebel gunboats, they will speedily grace the sweet-scented city of Memphis with their odorous presence.
– Published in The Davenport Daily Gazette, Davenport, Iowa, Wednesday Morning, April 30, 1862, p. 2
