LAND AND WATER. 
April 10, 1915. 
ertificially round so as to pass through Przemysl, 
end the fortifications of that to\Yu command 
the use of the line. Further, the railway 
over the Lupkow Pass, the most direct from 
Buda Pesth and Vienna, joins this main 
line at Przemysl Station. This essential rail- 
way junction, the most important strategical 
point, perhaps, in all Galicia, I have marked 
upon the sketch with the letter A. The town 
itself, which is in normal times about as large 
in population as Colchester, and which is very 
mixed in race and creed (quite a third of it being 
'Jewish), stands upon the right bank of the San, 
and the higher foothills which buttress the main 
range of the Carpathians here approach close to 
the stream from the soutJj. The water level at the 
town itself is about 600 feet above the sea, while 
the hills in the immediate neighbourhood of the 
town to the south have summits more than 700 feet 
above this level. 
The formation is continued on the north side 
of the river in hills only slightly less elevated and 
considerably softer in outline. A sort of rounded 
plateau here dominates the San, rising to a sort 
of backbone a thousand feet above the sea, or some 
400 feet above the water, with its highest summit 
another 300 feet more. To the eastAvard opens 
out the great plain, tlirough which the San runs 
with many turnings, bounded often by marshy 
fields and occasionally leaving stagnant back- 
.waters, which represent its old course. 
The town is not, therefore, one of those ideal 
ring fortresses which stand surrounded by fairly 
isolated heights. It is a site Avhich has been 
fortified in spite of the difficulties attaching to the 
ground, and not on account of natural opportuni- 
ties afforded. 
Nine main works defend the place. They 
are often reckoned as eight on account of the 
proximity and common object, and probably the 
linking up also of the two w^orks south of Side- 
liska, the south-easternmost horn of the ring, 
flaking these nine works in their order from 
ithe north of the river on the east, the first is on 
the spur of the thousand feet contour, overlooking 
the village of Letowninia. It is supported at less 
than four thousand yards range by the second 
.work, which is upon the northern summit of the 
plateau overlooking the village of Ujkowice. The 
Erst of these works is at about five thousand yards 
range, the second is nearly seven thousand yards 
range from the centre of the place. 
The third fort is on the open glacis of the 
plateau, between the villages of Batycze and Mal- 
Kowice. It is probably the strongest of all the 
works, with the possible exception of five and six. 
It dominates the great main road to the north, and 
is a good five miles (or eight thousand yai-ds) range 
from the town. 
The fourth work is at a rather puzzling dis- 
tance away upon the cast. A gap which can only 
be accounted for, if the information supplied is 
correct, by some peculiarity of the ground — pos- 
eibly marsh. It lies but a little above the water 
level, and overlooks the village of Bolestrizyce. 
The gap between this fourth work and the fifth is 
even more remarkable, amounting, it would seem, 
to close on ten thousand yards. But, even without 
ft knowledge of the ground, the map is sufficient to 
explain this, because there is a considerable area 
of marsh in the bends of the river that correspond 
with this gap, and because the main railway and 
the road which come in from Lemberg through 
Medyka are thoroughly dominated by each work 
on the north and on the south. 
This fifth great fort and the twin work. No. 6, 
close in its neighbourhood, have a characteristic 
that can only be explained by some feature in the , 
ground. They are very far thrust out from the 
fortress, and they are evidently regarded as guard- 
ing a joint in the armour, because a whole system 
of smaller works, temporary and permanent, have 
been thrust out beyond them towards the hills in 
the neighbourhood of the village of Popowice. 
Another big gap occurs between fort six and fort 
seven, which overlook the valley of the little tribu- 
tary river, the Wiar, from the east and from the 
west. But after this fort seven the rather abrupt 
and confused hill country to the west of it has been 
heavily defended. 
Fort eight, on Lipnik Hill, is the highest in 
the whole system — 1,350 feet above the se^ and 
some 750 above the valley floor. It is only just 
over two thousand yards from its neighbour and 
not much more than three thousand from the ninth 
and last fort of the ring, which stands on an 
abrupt spur immediately overlooking the San. 
Apart from these large works there are eight 
or nine smaller works, the general design of which 
is to close the gaps between the larger ones, and 
in the course of the siege a considerable number 
of temporary works were erected all along the 
ring, some of which are indicated upon the 
sketch. 
In the immediate neighbourhood of the town 
a closed system of trenches was drawn to cover 
the last thousand yards or so of the approach, and 
was extended on the north-west up as high as the 
village of Lupkowica, upon the plateau, so as to 
prevent this outlying portion of tne enceinte from 
being too immediately overlooked. 
Now, the first thing that strikes us upon the 
inspection of such a system is the absence of that 
extension of temporary batteries ontside the 
original ring which has marked the defence of 
Verdun, and which, it was guessed in these 
columns, would be found attached to Przemysl. 
And the absence of these can only mean that the 
Russians could not, or did not, bring up against 
the place any very heavy pieces. For instance, 
there is a whole district north-east of the town 
where forts one and two are overlooked from 
further heights, which run up to 1,300 feet ; and 
had Przemysl been subjected to such an ordeal 
as the Verdun forts suffered in early September, 
fort one and fort two could have been knocked to 
Eieces by indirect fire from behind these neigh- 
ouring hills as surely as Troyon was battered to 
pieces by the big Austrian howitzers hidden 
behind the heights of the Meuse. 
This is of a piece with all we know of the 
siege. It was a mere investment; and the place 
fell, not from the piercing of any part of its 
armour, but from exhaustion. 
In connection with this, however, it is in- 
teresting to note with what care the defence 
organised works and destroyed communications 
with the apparent object of fighting to the last, 
and only letting the place fall to an assault. No 
other explanation fits the tracing of that enclosed 
enceinte of trenches which covered everything in 
the immediate neighbourhood of the town, or the 
destruction of the main railway bridge over the 
,Wiar at B, which so astonished the Russians when 
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