Since his arrival at Valtetzi three days before, Petrobey had hardly rested night or day. The ground he had occupied and was fortifying with feverish haste was the top of a large spur of hill, going steeply down into the valley, and commanding a good view of it. Its advantages were obvious, for the cavalry, which at present they were particularly incompetent to meet, could not possibly attack them on such a perch, and also it would be difficult for the Turks to get up any of their big guns, of which there were several in Tripoli, to make an assault. They knew that in that town there were at least ten six-pounders, and certainly fifteen more nine-pounders, though since they had occupied the place, and found that the Turk had made no efforts whatever to bring artillery to bear on them, Petrobey suspected, and as it turned out rightly, that they were not all serviceable. Furthermore, occupying Valtetzi, they cut off Tripoli from Kalamata, whither before long, in all probability, the Turks would send a relief expedition by sea. However, by this occupation of Valtetzi there would be two passes to capture before they could send help to Tripoli, and, as he said, "they will be strong men if they take this." Tripoli itself lay about eight miles to the northeast, and at present the whole body of Greeks was occupied in fortifying the post they had taken. A village, largely Turkish, had stood on the spot, and the demolition of the houses went on from daybreak to nightfall to make material for building up a defensive wall. The soldiers, meantime, as their barracks were converted into fortifications, substituted for them huts made of poles woven in with osiers and brushwood, similar to those they used on Taygetus. The walls, it must be confessed, presented a curiously unworkmanlike aspect--here and there a course of regular square stones would be interrupted by a couple of Byzantine columns from the mosque, or the capital of a Venetian pillar in which a strange human-faced lion looked out from a nest of conventional acanthus leaves. Farther on in the same row would come a packet of roof tiles plastered together with mud, and a plane-tree standing in the line of the wall was pressed into the service, and supplied the place of a big stone for eight upright courses. Above that it had been sawn off, and the next section of the trunk being straight made a wooden coping for five yards of wall. Here a chimney-pot filled with earth and stones took its place among solider materials; here a hearthstone placed on end, with two inches of iron support for the stewing-pot, staring foolishly out into vacancy. Then came a section where the builders had drawn from a richer quarry, and a fine slab of porphyry and two _rosso antico_ pillars formed an exclusive coterie in the midst of rough blocks of limestone. But though heterogeneous and uncouth, the walls were stout and high, and, as Petrobey said, their business was not to build a pretty harem to please the women.