Trace Their
Deeds In France, Which They Twice Subdued; And Even Follow Them To
Spain, Where They Twanged The Yew And Raised The Battle-Axe, And
Left Behind Them A Name Of Glory At Inglis Mendi, A Name That Shall
Last Till Fire Consumes The Cantabrian Hills.
And, oh, in modern
times, trace the deeds of these gallant men all over the world, and
especially in
France and Spain, and admire them, even as I did that
sober, silent, soldier-like man who was showing me the wonders of a
foreign mountain fortress, wrested by his countrymen from a
powerful and proud nation more than a century before, and of which
he was now a trusty and efficient guardian.
We arrived close to the stupendous precipice, which rises abruptly
above the isthmus called the neutral ground, staring gauntly and
horridly at Spain, and immediately entered the excavations. They
consist of galleries scooped in the living rock at the distance of
some twelve feet from the outside, behind which they run the whole
breadth of the hill in this direction. In these galleries, at
short distances, are ragged yawning apertures, all formed by the
hand of man, where stand the cannon upon neat slightly-raised
pavements of small flint stones, each with its pyramid of bullets
on one side, and on the other a box, in which is stowed the gear
which the gunner requires in the exercise of his craft. Everything
was in its place, everything in the nicest English order,
everything ready to scathe and overwhelm in a few moments the
proudest and most numerous host which might appear marching in
hostile array against this singular fortress on the land side.
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