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On their right hardly did time suffice for boys to climb the trees that in four rows shaded its noisome canal; on their left not a second too many was there for the people to crowd the doorsteps, fill windows and garden gates, line the banquettes and silently gather breath and ardor while the escort moved by, before the moment was come in which to cheer and cheer and cheer, as with a hundred flashing sabres at shoulder the dismounted, heavy-knapsacked, camp-worn battery, Kincaid's Battery you could read the name on the flag Kincaid's Battery! came and came and passed.
Streets wide and clean, principally paved or macadamized. No banquettes; porches project in front of the houses, covering the trottoir, and pedestrians are forced into the middle of the street. That Hibernian must have been an emigrant to Cape Town, who remarked that "the middle of the street was the best side of the way."
At the entrance of Lake Huron bad weather came on; it snowed, and we took shelter in a bay, where we moored the ship to the shore close to one of those American forts that fringe the Indian frontier. They are all alike, these forts; a battlemented wall of thick planks, with banquettes for riflemen, and loopholed for heavier guns. Within each are the barracks and the officers' quarters.
The reader must think of the roof as an immense platform accessible by means of a wooden stairway in the interior of the tower, and battlemented on the four sides, the merlons of stone in massive blocks, and of a height to protect a tall man, the embrasures requiring banquettes to make them serviceable.
And, a day or two ago, Madame New Orleans, suddenly discovering that she can't go shopping without brushing her skirts against great rows of the vagabonds sunning themselves on the banquettes, says to the police: 'Catch 'em all, and the police catch a dozen or two, and the remaining three or four thousand overflow up and down the levee, and madame there," pointing tragically with the carving-knife at her "feeds them.
She courtesied and went swiftly into Mrs. Temple's room. Seizing my hat, I opened the door and found myself in the dark street. I had met Helene de St. Gre at last. And what a fool she must think me! As I hurried along the dark banquettes this thought filled my brain for a time to the exclusion of all others, so strongly is vanity ingrained in us.
In the United States the French element is less in evidence; nevertheless in New Orleans sidewalks are called "banquettes," and embankments, "levees"; and still the names of St. Louis, Des Moines, Detroit, and Lake Champlain perpetuate the memory of a lost empire.
The curtains were carefully pierced for musketry, and strengthened outside with a trellis work of bamboo, and finished off with banquettes on the ramparts. An excellent powder magazine was built in the same way, and, being situated in the interior of the fort, was quite safe from any accident.
The barber of the 'Grand Turk' was a spruce young negro, who aired his importance with balmy complacency, and was greatly courted by the circle in which he moved. The young colored population of New Orleans were much given to flirting, at twilight, on the banquettes of the back streets. Somebody saw and heard something like the following, one evening, in one of those localities.
Rampart walls, traverses, screen-walls, intricate entrances, narrow and labyrinthine passages, sunken thoroughfares, banquettes, parapets, and other devices of a people thoroughly conversant with military engineering and defence, and not one word, not one line, not one clue as to the identity of the builders nor the object of their colossal labours; labours which one felt could only have been achieved through the compulsory service of many slaves, for thousands of tons of granite blocks had been transported up the precipitous kopje to a height of no less than two hundred feet, which a careful examination of the rocks on the hill proves must mostly have been quarried from granite about twelve miles distant.
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