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In general, to fight in front of a great town, when the chances are against you, is as great an error as to fight in front of a marsh with few causeways; so far as mere topography is concerned, it is a greater error still. Lemberg did not, indeed, fulfil all these conditions.
The small Islands of this groupe are frequently only separated by what are sometimes denominated causeways, or in other words, connected by reefs of coral, extending from the extreme point of one Island and connecting it with another. These reefs are nearly dry at low water, and the communication is easily kept up between them by the natives on foot.
But these are mere tyros in the affairs of monikins. The fact was that there were just as many different opinions and interests at work to regulate the length of the causeways, as there were, owners of land along their line of route. The great object was to start in what was called the business quarter of the town, and then to proceed with the work as far as circumstances would allow.
He saw the stream of miners flowing along the causeways from the mines at the end of the afternoon, thousands of blackened, slightly distorted human beings with red mouths, all moving subjugate to his will.
The sides were so steep and scarped by nature that it seemed as if it would be impossible to scale them, but a closer inspection showed that two causeways led to the plateau, one from Islamgi and one from Sangalat. Theodore's army, its size and strength unknown, was seen encamped on the spit of Islamgi. A deep ravine led into the wide valley beneath the heights occupied by the Abyssinians.
The year before last he began to dig. Peat had formed itself in the long course of time, and its preservative qualities had kept safe for our eyes that which it enclosed and covered. The hillocks proved to be the remains of British houses burned with fire. They were set on ground made solid in the midst of waters, with causeways for approach from the land.
The amphitheatre of dark hills surrounding the level plain, the two snowy mountain-peaks, the five lakes covering nearly half the valley, the city rising out of the midst of the waters, miles from the shore, with which it was connected by its four causeways, the straight streets of low flat-roofed houses, the numbers of canals crowded with canoes of Indians going to and from the market, the floating gardens moved from place to place, on which vegetables and flowers were cultivated, the great pyramid up which the Spanish army saw their captured companions led in solemn procession, and sacrificed on the top all these are details in the mental picture.
Standing here, one could imagine the scene that Cortes and his men saw from their camp, outside Mexico, on that dreadful day when the Mexicans had cut off their retreat along the causeways, and taken more than sixty Spanish prisoners.
Boreman's for pastime, and there staid an houre or two talking with him, and reading a discourse about the River of Thames, the reason of its being choked up in several places with shelfes; which is plain is, by the encroachments made upon the River, and running out of causeways into the River at every wood-wharfe; which was not heretofore when Westminster Hall and White Hall were built, and Redriffe Church, which now are sometimes overflown with water.
And while the facts of the siege amount to little more than keeping possession of the narrow causeways, by aid of superior implements of war, until famine and thirst had done their work, yet the Spanish histories of the Conquest make it to surpass in interest, and in the magnitude of forces engaged, almost any siege on record.
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