The town, which was rather attractive and picturesque, stood in a sort of plain, on the river Meuse, which divides here into several streams. It was surrounded by fortifications, considered impregnable, which were planted with large trees, and there was a very satisfying Mediaeval gateway flanked by two great towers, while an attractive street called the "Promenade de la Digne" followed the banks of the river. The sights of the town, however, were very soon exhausted. If one followed the Avenue de la Gare, one came to the Porte St. Paul, and just beyond it the Palais de Justice and a large new college building. Then there was the Porte Chaussée, which was very old and had two fine crenelated towers. There were several bridges crossing the river Meuse, and along its banks a collection of ancient many colored houses, all so battered, bewindowed, and balconied, as to be quite fascinating pictorially but certainly very dirty and "smelly." Ranged along the water washed walls of these quaint houses, were many barges and washing boats, painted in charming tones of green and brown, and these, reflected in the water, made delightful pictures for the painter and snap shots for tourists. A very good regimental band played in the square once a week, and this formed an excuse for a promenade of the townspeople, and a social gathering at the small cafés, for the post prandial "bock." There was a Hôtel de Ville of the seventeenth century, lacking however in character, in the courtyard of which were displayed some bronze cannon, given to Verdun by the government in recognition of its heroic resistance in the Franco-Prussian war of 1870. Near the cathedral were the remains of an ancient gate called the Porte Châtel. The Cathedral, the towers of which were high above the town, though lacking spires, was not unimpressive, but it had been so often rebuilt and changed, as to have few vestiges of the structure begun in the twelfth century. The two towers were square and topped by balustrades of little or no character. The buttresses of the apse were, however, of architectural value, and the apse had some curious and remarkable sculptures, while the triple nave was of noble proportions and had some Gothic vaulting. A curious bas relief representing the Assumption was shown in the transept; but beyond these features the Cathedral had little or nothing to offer, save a very beautiful fifteenth century cloister, which we nearly missed seeing, connecting die Cathedral with the grand séminaire. The great Citadel, renowned throughout Europe, upon which such high hopes centered in the beginning of the present war, and which resisted the efforts of the army of the Crown Prince, occupied the ancient site of the Abbey of St. Vannes, of the tenth century. It was so rigidly guarded that no one was permitted to enter it. From a roadway called the Promenade de la Roche one might idle away the hours appraising the picturesque valley of the Meuse.