POSEN AND STRASBURGr. 
491 
powerfully in that its escarp (a regular demi-revetment, counter-arched, and 
sustaining behind it a regular rampart and parapet) constitutes the face of a 
double-storied barrack, complete in all respects for 1000 men, in the 
arrangements of which a well room and a telegraph room are specially 
noticeable. The communication with the country runs from the centre of 
this barrack, over the ditch of the gorge by a draw-bridge, on to a small 
place of arms, which is covered by ordinary glacis, and contains, besides the 
entrance, a defensible bomb-proof guard-house, and, notably, the main 
powder-magazine. The earthen covering of this last rises to about the level 
of the cordon of the opposite gorge-rampart, and offers in that direction 
some 40 ft. of horizontal thickness. 
Expense magazines and shell rooms are within the fort, each adjacent to 
its own gun—an accommodation fitly bestowed on the choice and compara¬ 
tively select few pieces composing the armament. Erom four to five guns 
for each face, and from three to four for each flank (counting the one gun 
at the angle of the shoulder in both reckonings), giving from 12 to 16 
heavy guns per fort (the armament of the gorge remaining apparently unde¬ 
termined at the time of my visit)—all 6-in. breech-loaders of the new 
full-powered pattern—are comfortably housed in store-rooms under the 
ramparts. I was informed that they were shortly to take up their more 
permanent residence, each within its own traverse, on the level of its own 
platform, until brought out on occasion; but this information was by no 
means official, and I did not quite see that a sufficiency of house room was 
immediately available for such lodgment.* They are to fire from high 
carriages, over full uncut parapets. With the high mound of the traverse 
shielding them on either side, the place of each for action becomes a sort of 
earthen chamber, open only towards the sky and the rear, of a decidedly 
serviceable and comfortable appearance. 
Erom the gorges of the forts, generally, covered ways are led, right and 
left, in the direction of their neighbours—but not continuously so, as they 
only appear, at present, in the more important situations; and they are, at 
places one or two hundred yards distant laterally from some of the more 
exposed or influential forts, developed into sites for powerful batteries, with 
50 or 100 running yards of the usual massive earthen parapet, bearing on 
the general front and the approaches, but awaiting armament and completion 
until occasion and special object declare themselves. But these inchoate 
batteries are not far withdrawn from the front of the defence, as at Posen, 
but are pretty well up with the line of the gorges of the forts, and are only 
just kept back behind the lines of fire of their flanks. 
A circular road, by the backs of the forts, is nearly completed, and radial 
roads running to, or near to, most of them, are supplied by the already 
existing roads between town and country. Telegraphic communication 
underground is provided, but the railway system has not been much 
moulded to military model. Main lines from the north, the east, and the 
south-west join a line which makes two-thirds of the circuit of the place. 
* Unless the ammunition and stores were removed to a lower story, the chambers of which 
appeared to he in course of construction immediately under the upper ones. Both tiers of rooms 
open towards the rear; the interior slope of the rampart having a broad level step (almost a second 
terreplein) at the level of the lower floor—very convenient for the general communication, 
