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At his suggestion several houses had been demolished, to furnish materials in wood and iron to stop the gaps as soon as made. Especially about the Sand Hill fort and the Porcupine a plentiful supply was collected, no time having been lost in throwing up stockades, palisades, and every other possible obstruction to the expected assailants.
The road through the forest reaches the highest points, because it is at the highest points that the Chinese forts are situated, either on the road or on some elevated clearing near it. The forts are stockades inclosed in wooden palisades, and guarded by chevaux de frise of sharp-cut bamboo. The barracks are a few native straw-thatched wooden huts.
Then, as they left the city, and the dusk deepened, his eyes went toward the river, went toward the vague and waiting West. The Palisades lay, a wide bar of soft dull gray, against the paler dove-colour of the sky. Above them, bare trees were etched sharply, and beneath them was the satiny surface of the full Hudson.
Loop-holes were cut through the palisades, just sufficiently large to allow the barrel of a musket to be thrust through, and aim to be taken at any approaching foe. The space within was sufficient to accommodate several families, who were thus united for mutual protection. Their horses and other cattle could be driven within the enclosure at night.
Continuing up the Napa Valley, walled on either hand by great rock palisades and redwood forests and carpeted with endless vineyards, and crossing the many stone bridges for which the County is noted and which are a joy to the beauty-loving eyes as well as to the four-horse tyro driver, past Calistoga with its old mud-baths and chicken-soup springs, with St.
There were not less than four rows of palisades, consisting of trunks of trees set in the earth and leaning outward; and there was a kind of gallery well supplied with stones and provided with wooden gutters for quenching fire. Something more than the hap-hazard methods of the Hurons was needed to capture this stronghold, and Champlain instructed them how to set about it.
In one corner of the square formed by the palisades were the kitchen and offices. The Europeans with Mr. Brooke consisted of Mr. Douglas, formerly in the navy, a clever young surgeon, and a gentleman of the name of Williamson, who, being master of the native language, as well as active and intelligent, made an excellent prime minister.
Half the men were set to hunting and fishing, half to chopping logs for the new fort built in the usual fashion, with high palisades, a main barracks a hundred feet long in the centre, three stories high, with trap-doors connecting each story, cabins and hutches all round the inside of the palisades.
An Indian war band was lurking near by, and was on the point of making an effort to carry Freeland's station by an attack in the darkness. In the dead of the night the attempt was made. One by one the warriors left the protection of the tangled wood-growth, slipped silently across the open space, and crouched under the heavy timber pickets of the palisades, until all had gathered together.
The stars still glittered down into the parade; the moon cast a gentle shadow along the palisades; the sentries in the block-house towers, the gunners lying flat beneath their great cannon, feeling the dew on their faces, looking toward the moon, the guard ready to turn out at the word, all listened languorously, and drank in the sweets of the summer night with the music.
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