before whose walls no trifling quantity of British blood has been
spilt.

The city of Bayonne stands, as everybody knows, upon the Adour,
about six or eight miles from the point where that river falls
into the sea. On the southern or Spanish bank, where the whole
of the city, properly so called, is built, the country, to the
distance of two or three miles from the walls, is perfectly flat
and the soil sandy, and apparently not very productive. On the
bank the ground rises rather abruptly from the brink of the
stream, sloping upwards likewise from the sea, till you arrive at
the pinnacle upon which the citadel is erected, and which hangs
immediately over the town. Thus, though the Adour in fact
separates the city from the suburbs and citadel, yet as the
ramparts of the former extend to the water's edge on both sides,
and as those of the latter continue the sweep from points
immediately opposite, the general appearance presented is that of
one considerable town, with a broad river flowing through the
middle of it.

It will be seen, even from this short and imperfect sketch, that
its situation gives to Bayonne, considered as a military post, a
superiority over most cities; inasmuch as it affords peculiar
facilities towards rendering it a place of great strength. On one
side there is a plain, always accounted by engineers the most
convenient for the construction of fortifications; on the other
an eminence, lofty enough to command the surrounding country, and
at the same time sufficiently level at the summit to receive the
walls of a fortress, powerful at once from its position and
regularity. But the great strength of Bayonne arose at this