J827.] [ JUS ] 



A DAY AT THE CAMP OF ST. OMER. 



IN these " piping times of peace," when a camp has long ceased to bo 

 a common place, a description of the most extensive and complete one that 

 has been formed for many years past may not be without interest espe- 

 cially to English readers of the present generation, to whom a camp is a 

 thing known only by name. In the midst of a line and richly-cultivated 

 country, lying to the south of St. Omer, in the department of the Pas-do- 

 Calais, two ranges of hills rise parallel with each other, and between them 

 runs an agreeable valley, watered by the Aa. On the summit of the 

 second of these ranges of hills, the Camp of St. Omer is formed. We 

 would engage the reader's imagination to accompany us thither, step by 

 step, through one of the late grand field-days which were got up on the 

 occasion of the King's visit since a distinct and picturesque idea of any 

 particular set of objects which address themselves to the sight, can by no 

 other means be obtained, through the intervention of the pen alone. 



We will start from our resting-place at St. Omer by day break, that we 

 may see the object of our visit under all its aspects ; and, in passing out of 

 the city-gates at this early hour, we may gain as distinct a notion as the 

 uninitiated can gain, of what is at once the most curious, interesting, and yet 

 unintelligible of the inanimate sights connected with war and its affairs 

 namely, the immediate outskirts of a fortified place, forming what are 

 understood generally by the fortifications. 



Imagine, first, a double gateway, opening into an archway of solid 

 brick-work, thirty feet thick. It is dark even at mid-day; and our voices 

 descend and seem to press upon us as we pass through, as if the place were 

 one not made to talk in, since the very first step into it excites sensations 

 and associations that silence alone can fitly entertain. This archway opens 

 at the outer extremity on a causeway traversing an immense fosse. Paus- 

 ing here for a moment, we look upon a kind of view that resembles and 

 reminds you of nothing else whatever, except that from the corresponding 

 spot of any other fortified place. Behind you is the black, dungeon-like 

 archway, joining on either side to perpendicular walls, rising so high as to 

 shut in all appearance of buildings, and of every thing but the tops of the 

 trees with which the ramparts are occasionally planted. Then the water 

 of the fosse itself, and, on the opposite side to the walls, numerous per- 

 fectly bare mounds of green earth, rising shelvingly to nearly the height of 

 the opposing walls, and moulded into angular forms, each of which has 

 some unintelligible correspondence with, or opposition to, some other 

 mound, of the seconds? third line of fortifications that you are presently 

 to pass. The spot on which you stand is a wooden platform, attached by 

 chains to huge beams over-head, and forming the first draw-bridge, which 

 is so constructed that the beams above nearly correspond in weight with 

 the platform below them, and the additional weight of one or two men is 

 sufficient to move in a moment the whole cumbrous fabric, and swing it 

 up from its bearings, till it hangs against the archway and the wall above, 

 arid leaves open the great gap formed by the fosse so that nothing can 

 pass either in or out by that entrance. The rising end of the drawbridge 

 rests (when down) on a causeway, which, at the point where the above- 

 named mounds of earth meet it, is terminated by another gateway, joined to 

 the rising mounds by palisades, and opening to another drawbridge similar 

 to the above. On reaching this, the view on all sides is as singular as it 

 was from the first, but somewhat different since now you look on nothing 



