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Twenty-four years ago, on a delicious October afternoon, I stood on the absolutely level plateau at the mouth of Pawnee Fork where that historic creek debouches into the great river. The remembrance of that view will never pass from my memory, for it showed a curious temporary blending of two distinct civilizations.
Deep in this picturesque ravine, buried among the thick shadows of tall old trees, runs the narrow mill-road, which lower down debouches on the end of the village street.
We look down upon the calm-flowing Exe threading its way through the valley till it debouches at Exmouth; on the riverside beneath us is the quay, with coasting schooners and barges moored alongside, and sundry bales of merchandise heaped upon the wharf, as though the people were playing at commerce to remind the world at large that Exeter was once an important port, although some ten miles from the river's mouth.
Its cradle lies in the bed of a broad ravine, forty or fifty feet deep, that rises in the hill-side, and, crossing the whole of the second bottom, debouches on the first, where the waters whose current it so far guides, trickle oozily down through a swampy bed.
Still to the eastward we have the same tree-clad hilly view, beautiful in itself, but tiresome in its constant sameness. After a stretch, and half an hour's pipes and breathing, we start afresh, and cross the bay into which the river debouches.
On the 11th of August, the armistice came to an end. Its rightful term was the 17th; but the current of events swept over it. Napoleon was then in Dresden, which he held as the key and pivot of his position, and to cover it, he had constructed a large and formidable entrenched camp along the bases of Lilienstein and Königstein. Of the situation of these two enormous rocks I have spoken elsewhere. They stand about twelve English miles from Dresden, like giant sentinels, that guard the debouches of Bohemia and Silesia, while between them flows the Elbe, now passable only by a ferry, but by Napoleon's care, then bridged over. Here a position was marked out for not less than sixty thousand men, whence, as from a centre, it was competent for the French to pass either into Bohemia, where the Grand Army of the Allies seemed preparing to assemble, or to Silesia and Lusatia. But it was not on this side of the Saxon capital exclusively, that Napoleon fixed a vigilant eye. His real line was the line of the Elbe, from Hamburg to Dresden; his communications with France were kept open by Erfurth, and through the Thuringian forest; and he took care that all the approaches to Dresden should be so guarded, as that, while the city itself continued secure from insult, the force in possession might have free avenues through which to operate on any threatened point in this enormous circle. "Dresde," said he, "est le pivot, sur lequel je veux manoeuvrer pour faire face
In a word, let no one despair of the Empire because a few thousand soldiers are killed, wounded, or captured Now for the story as plainly and briefly as possible. When Buller had arrived at Potgieter's he found himself confronted by a horseshoe position of great strength, enclosing and closing the debouches from the ford where he had secured a practical bridgehead.
The blocks of fine brick houses that covered Richmond Hill are given over to Italian tenements. Minetta Brook, if it sings at all, sings among the sewers far below the dirty pavements. But Minetta Lane still lives, a short alley that debouches on MacDougal Street. Edgar Allan Poe once strolled on summer evenings through Minetta Lane with his beautiful Annabel Lee.
He raises the siege, abandons every thing before Mantua, throws the greater part of his force upon the first column, which debouches by Brescia, beats it and forces it back upon the mountains: the second column arrives upon the same ground, and is there beaten in its turn, and compelled to retire into the Tyrol to keep up its communications with the right.
As soon as the bridge was complete Lyttelton's Brigade would cross, and, ignoring the fire from the Boer left, extended along the Doornkloof heights, attack the Vaal Krantz ridge, which formed the left of the horseshoe curve around the debouches of Potgieter's.
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