Between the eastern end of the lake and the western spur of the Beles is a broad gap, and there many British officers believed that a break through might be effected, although it was dominated by the batteries on the Beles. But no attempt was made here, save an attack during the last operations in September 1918, and even then it proved abortive and was soon abandoned. The XVI Corps area was reached by the great Serres road, some 70 km. in length from Salonica to the Struma. For the first 25 km., as far as Guvesne, transport could also be effected by means of a normal-gauge railway built by the British during the war; at railhead there was a M.T. park, whence innumerable lorries conveyed men and supplies to the Struma. Various décauvilles spread out from the end of the road towards the front lines. The road climbed over several steep ranges of hills and plunged down into deep gullies, for the mountain chains in this part of the country all run parallel to the Struma. The Corps H.Q. was at Sivri in summer, a charmingly situated village just below the last range of hills before the drop into the Struma valley; in winter it moved down to a spot nearer the main road. The positions of chief resistance were along this ridge in parallel lines, but there were also a series of important bridge-heads along the river. Beyond the river there were two or three lines of villages, some of them quite large, others merely _chifliks_ or farms, abandoned by the inhabitants and partly in ruins. Sometimes the first and even the second lines would be held by the British, while the Bulgars held others further away, along the foot of the mountains behind Serres. But in the summer of 1917, owing to the great heat and the ravages of malaria, the villages beyond the Struma were evacuated by the British, and the bridge-heads held with only an indispensible minimum of troops, while the defence of the spaces between the bridge-heads was entrusted to the river itself, which is difficult to wade, and to the cross-fire of the ports defending the bridge-heads; in any case, in order to attempt the passage of the Struma the enemy would have had to traverse a broad tract of open country before reaching its banks, exposed to the fire of the British batteries hidden amid the dense vegetation or in the crevices of the hills to the west of the right bank. In order to maintain contact with the enemy the British made frequent raids with infantry and cavalry patrols into the villages occupied by isolated detachments of Bulgars; the Bulgarian patrols and outposts did not show much fighting spirit and usually retired precipitously. Sometimes the British patrols penetrated into positions held by permanent enemy garrisons. The most important and successful of these raids was that on Homondos in the autumn of 1917, where many prisoners and some machine guns were captured, as well as a voluminous official correspondence, whence valuable information was acquired, especially concerning the