As this chain of hills undulates along the coast here, sometimes bending
a little back from it, or again inclining out toward it, one of its
zigzags approaches within a mile of Louisburg. At this point, several
low, lumpy ridges push off for the seashore, through long reaches of
boggy moorland, now and then disappearing beneath a shallow pond or
stagnant pool, which lies glistening among the hollows between. Where it
is uneven the land is stony and unfertile; where level, it is a bog.
This rendered the land side as unfavorable to a besieging force as the
nest of outlying rocks and reefs did the sea approaches. A continued
rainfall must have made it wholly untenable for troops.
The Fortified Line.
It is one of these ridges just noticed as breaking away from the main
range toward the seashore, and so naturally bent, also, as to touch the
sea at one end and the harbor at the other, that the French engineers
converted into a regular fortification; while within the space thus
firmly enclosed by both nature and art, the old city of the lilies
stretched down a gentle, grassy slope to the harbor shore.
Demolition of the City.
Not one stone of this city remains upon another to-day. After the second
siege (1758) the English engineers were ordered to demolish it, and so
far as present appearances go, never was an order more effectually
carried out. All that one sees to-day, in room of it, is a poor fishing
hamlet, straggling along the edge of the harbor, the dwellings being on
one side, and the fish-houses and stages on the other side of the Sydney
road, which suddenly contracts into a lane, and then comes to an end,
along with the village itself, in a fisherman’s back-yard.
Not so, however, with the still massive earthworks, for the British
engineers were only able, after many months’ labor, and with a liberal
use of powder, to partly execute the work of demolition assigned them.
I spent several hours, at odd times, in wandering about these old ruins,
and could not help being thankful that for once, at least, the
destroying hand of man had been compelled to abandon its work to the
rains and frosts of heaven.
Citadel or King’s Bastion.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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