Beginning with the citadel, in which the formalities of the surrender took place, I found it still quite well defined, although nothing now remains above ground except some old foundation walls to show where long ranges of stone buildings once stood. Here were the different military offices, the officers’ quarters and the chapel. The shattered bomb-proofs, however, were still distinguishable, though much choked up with débris, and their well-turned arches remain to show how firmly the solid masonry resisted the assaults of the engineers. In these damp holes the women, children, and non-combatants passed most of the forty-seven days of the siege. From this starting-point one may continue the walk along the ramparts, without once quitting them, for fully a mile, to the point where they touch the seashore among the inaccessible rocks and heaving surf of the ocean itself. The Casemates. These ramparts nowhere rise more than fifty feet above the sea-level, but are everywhere of amazing thickness and solidity. The moat was originally eighty feet across, and the walls stood thirty feet above it, but these dimensions have been much reduced by the work of time and weather. A considerable part of the line was further defended by a marsh, through which a storming column would have found it impossible to advance, and hardly less difficult to make a retreat. The besiegers were therefore obliged to concentrate their attack upon one or two points, and these had been rendered the most formidable of the whole line in consequence of the knowledge that the other parts were comparatively unassailable. In other words, the besieged were able to control, in a measure, where the besiegers should attack them. Natural Obstacles made use of. Although the partly ruined bomb-proofs are the only specimens of masonry now to be seen in making this tour, the broad and deep excavation of the moat and covered-way, and the clean, well-grassed slopes of the glacis, promise to hold together for another century at least. Brambles and fallen earth choke up the embrasures. It is necessary to use care in order to avoid treading upon a toad or a snake while you are groping among the mouldy casemates or when crossing the parade. Those magical words “In the King’s name,” so often proclaimed here with salvos of artillery, have now no echo except in the sullen dash of the sea against the rocky shores outside the perishing fortress, and “What care these roarers for the name of King?” Graveyard, Point Rochefort.