Increased exertions were turning to deadly account all the means necessary for giving magnitude and certainty to the operations. Everywhere the works were rising in different forms, menacing in aspect, which, only for the wide area of stony clay and rock which covered the hills, would, by this time, have almost intermingled with the advanced positions of the Russians. Impenetrable by pickaxe, mining was the common process of dislodging the stones. At particularly hard or exposed works it was impossible to employ any but sappers. The 21-gun battery, insatiable in its wants, commanded the zeal of strong parties. Rifle screens were begun, deepened, or improved far away in advance to pioneer the enterprise. That system of hostile espionage had been so successful, it was enlarged to lessen the fire of the enemy’s tirailleurs. An advanced excavation had been formed across the Woronzoff road in the middle ravine; but this not affording sufficient security against a surreptitious sortie, was further defended by a stout chevaux-de-frise fixed some distance in its front. Splinter-proof surgeries were also constructed, intimating an impending struggle. Limestone caverns in the sides of the hills were converted into receptacles for ammunition, shells, &c., and their rude entrances were protected by walls of sand-bags and dry stones. Other magazines were also made by driving galleries under the super-incumbent rock into a bed of clay resting on a vein of shells. Scooping out the earth between, artificial caves were thus formed with rocky roofs and testaceous floors. To provide against the chances of the arches falling in, by the concussion of heavy mortars in the batteries, strong props were fixed in those grottoes, and the powder deposited within them was preserved by the usual contrivances. All the revetments were put into fighting trim, and embrasures cut or masked as events dictated. The merlons, too, were thickened, so also were the traverses and parapets, more particularly in the parts where the works standing on the crests of the hills in advance were the most exposed. On the right attack, the sappers were driving on vigorously in advance of the second parallel. The first night’s work for this object was given on the 3rd April. In a short time the zig-zag was run out to the intended point, and turning off like a shepherd’s crook, it seemed as if it were ambitious to hook on to the Redan.