This town was scarcely expected by the French to make any resistance. It was encircled with towers, which were connected by an ancient archery wall, irregular in form without a ditch, and so thin as to offer no resistance even to field artillery. To the north and east, some high ridges flanked, and seemed entirely to command the weak rampart; but the English engineer had observed that the nearest ridges formed, at half pistol-shot, a natural glacis, the plane of which, one point excepted, intersected the crest of the parapet with great nicety; and to this advantage was added a greater number of towers, better flanks, and more powerful resources for an interior defence. He judged therefore that the seemingly favourable nature of the ridges combined with other circumstances, would scarcely fail to tempt the enemy to commence their trenches on that side. With a view to render the delusion unavoidable, he strengthened the western front of the place, rendered the access to it uneasy, by demolishing the main walls and removing the flooring of an isolated suburb on the north-west; and an outwork, of a convent which was situated about a hundred yards from the place, and to the east of the suburb. This done, he prepared an internal defence, which rendered the storming of the breach the smallest difficulty to be encountered; but to appreciate his design the local peculiarities must be described. Tarifa was cloven in two by the bed of a periodical torrent which entering at the east, passed out at the opposite point. This stream was barred, at its entrance, by a tower with a portcullis, in front of which pallisades were planted across the bed of the water. The houses within the walls were strongly built and occupied inclined planes rising from each side of the torrent, and at the exit of the latter there were two massive structures, forming part of the walls called the tower and castle of the Gusmans, both of which looked up the hollow formed by the meeting of the inclined planes at the stream. From these structures, first a sandy neck of land, and then a causeway, the whole being about six hundred yards long, joined the town to an island, or rather promontory, about two thousand yards in circumference, with perpendicular sides, which forbade any entrance save by the causeway; and at the island end of the latter there was an unfinished entrenchment and battery.