As this chain of hills undulates along the coast here, sometimes bending a little back from it, or again inclining out toward it, one of its zigzags approaches within a mile of Louisburg. At this point, several low, lumpy ridges push off for the seashore, through long reaches of boggy moorland, now and then disappearing beneath a shallow pond or stagnant pool, which lies glistening among the hollows between. Where it is uneven the land is stony and unfertile; where level, it is a bog. This rendered the land side as unfavorable to a besieging force as the nest of outlying rocks and reefs did the sea approaches. A continued rainfall must have made it wholly untenable for troops.
The Fortified Line.
It is one of these ridges just noticed as breaking away from the main range toward the seashore, and so naturally bent, also, as to touch the sea at one end and the harbor at the other, that the French engineers converted into a regular fortification; while within the space thus firmly enclosed by both nature and art, the old city of the lilies stretched down a gentle, grassy slope to the harbor shore.
Demolition of the City.
Not one stone of this city remains upon another to-day. After the second siege (1758) the English engineers were ordered to demolish it, and so far as present appearances go, never was an order more effectually carried out. All that one sees to-day, in room of it, is a poor fishing hamlet, straggling along the edge of the harbor, the dwellings being on one side, and the fish-houses and stages on the other side of the Sydney road, which suddenly contracts into a lane, and then comes to an end, along with the village itself, in a fisherman’s back-yard.
Not so, however, with the still massive earthworks, for the British engineers were only able, after many months’ labor, and with a liberal use of powder, to partly execute the work of demolition assigned them.
I spent several hours, at odd times, in wandering about these old ruins, and could not help being thankful that for once, at least, the destroying hand of man had been compelled to abandon its work to the rains and frosts of heaven.
Citadel or King’s Bastion.
Beginning with the citadel, in which the formalities of the surrender took place, I found it still quite well defined, although nothing now remains above ground except some old foundation walls to show where long ranges of stone buildings once stood. Here were the different military offices, the officers’ quarters and the chapel. The shattered bomb-proofs, however, were still distinguishable, though much choked up with débris, and their well-turned arches remain to show how firmly the solid masonry resisted the assaults of the engineers. In these damp holes the women, children, and non-combatants passed most of the forty-seven days of the siege. From this starting-point one may continue the walk along the ramparts, without once quitting them, for fully a mile, to the point where they touch the seashore among the inaccessible rocks and heaving surf of the ocean itself.
The Casemates.