None laid the platforms or built the magazines, splinter-proofs, &c., but the sappers. Everything, indeed, which came under the denomination of artificers’ work, was executed by them. The fixing of platforms was only second in importance, as far as hazard was concerned, to the formation of the embrasures. Repeatedly the carpenters were called upon in broad daylight to render them serviceable. Relaying sprung sleepers or planks, and renewing cleets or bolts broken by the violence of the fire or a tearing recoil, were frequently attended to whilst the siege was at its highest; and the only protection which the carpenters received under such circumstances was the scanty cover of a shallow genouillère, with perhaps a sapper or two in the gorge busy mending the cheeks of a shivered embrasure. In former sieges the laying of a platform under fire was held to be an act of great personal daring; but in this wonderful enterprise, it was so much a habit of the sappers to see to this particular detail, that it passed among occurrences as a common matter. What is an embrasure? So much has been said about it, it needs the question; and the answer may not be misplaced here. Look at one while the battle rages. It is a formal cut in a mound of earth, taking the shape of a wedge, with the broad end to the enemy, the narrow to the platform. The narrow end is called “the neck,” and possesses just width enough to admit a man or the muzzle of a gun. It then extends to the front for more than twenty feet with a widening orifice, ten or twelve feet broad at the greatest expansion, which is designated “the mouth.”