Page:A history of the military transactions of the British nation in Indostan.djvu/670

646 of the English encampment, and 2000 from the bound-hedge, another avenue called the Villenore, strikes off from the avenue of Oulgarry, on the left as you come from the boundhedge, on the right, if looking from the camp. The Villenore, after continuing 400 yards at a right angle from the Oulgarry, turns nearly at another right angle, and leads straight west, and parallel to the other avenue; but ceases midway in the plain between Perimbé, and the fort of Villenore, which Colonel Coote was preparing to attack, and which must always be distinguished, in considering our narrative, from the redoubt of the same name in the boundhedge: the Villenore avenue, towards its termination, covered the right flank of the English camp. From a redoubt in the boundhedge, at 1000 yards to the right of the avenue of Oulgarry, commenceth another avenue, called, as well as the redoubt itself, the Valdore: this avenue continues only 1000 yards straight to the west, when, stopped by the opposition of the Red-hill, it inclines in another straight line to the left, until it has verged within 300 yards of the avenue of Oulgarry, which it then joins in another straight line, and at a right angle on the right, exactly facing the junction of the Villenore avenue on the other side the road, so that both together intersected the avenue of Oulgarry at right angles in the same point. It was along the Valdore avenue that Colonel Coote, with his cavalry, followed the French troops, when they retreated before him on the 7th of March, the first time he went to reconnoitre the ground about Pondicherry. Exactly opposite to the second angle of the Valdore avenue, as you come from the bound-hedge, and the first if you are going to it from the avenue of Oulgarry, stands a hillock, the highest, and the only conspicuous one on the plain, detached from the Red-hill; from the outward ridge of which this hillock is about 300 yards distant: thus situated, it commanded in flank the third or last, and in slant the middle or second turning of the Valdore avenue. Colonel Coote, having considered all the ground we have described, fortified the hillock with a closed redoubt of three guns, threw up a retrenchment of three guns across the avenue of Oulgarry, 150 yards in front of the