Page:A history of the military transactions of the British nation in Indostan.djvu/313

Book IX fort from the regular approach of trenches on the south; but on the west and north the ground presented rather more advantages than obstacles to an enemy. By many additions and improvements Fort St. David was now become a fortification armed at all points; but the original defect of want of space in the body of the place still remained; being only 140 feet from w. to E. and 390 from N. to s. The four bastions at the angles mounted each 12 guns. The curtains, as well as the bastions, were surrounded by a faussebray with a brick parapet. The outworks were, a horn-work to the north, mounting 34 guns; two large ravelins, one on the east, the other on the west; a ditch round all, which had a cuvette cut along the middle, and was supplied with water from the river of Tripapolore; the scarp and counter-scarp of the ditch faced with brick; a broad covered way excellently pallisaded, with arrows at the salient angles commanding the glacis, and the glacis itself was provided with well-constructed mines. All these works, excepting the horn-work, were planned by Mr. Robins, but the horn- work was raised before his arrival in India with much ignorance and expence, the whole being of solid masonry, and the rampart too narrow to admit the free recoil of the guns. The ground to the north of the fort, included by the sea, the rivers of Panar and Tripapolore, and the canal which joins them, is a plot of sand, rising in several parts into large hillocks, which afford good shelter against the fort. On the edge of the canal, 1300 yards to the north of the fort, stood an obsolete redoubt, called Chuckly-point. It was of masonry, square, mounted eight guns, and in the area were lodgments for the guard: the entrance was a pallisaded gate under an arch, but the redoubt was not enclosed by a ditch. About 200 yards to the right of this stood another such redoubt, on a sand-hill called Patcharee. Four hundred yards in the rear of these redoubts was another sandhill, much larger than that of Patcharee, on which the Dutch had a factory-house called Thevenapatam; but the house had lately been demolished; and a fascine battery of five guns was raised on the hill. In a line on the left of this hill, and on the brink of the canal, was a gateway, with a narrow rampart and battlements, which commanded