d jointed with a care to leave no defenceless
points; the windows were loopholes, the door massive and small, and the
roof, like the rest of the structure, was framed of hewn timber, covered
properly with bark to exclude the rain. The lower apartment as usual
contained stores and provisions; here indeed the party kept all their
supplies; the second story was intended for a dwelling, as well as for
the citadel, and a low garret was subdivided into two or three rooms,
and could hold the pallets of some ten or fifteen persons. All the
arrangements were exceedingly simple and cheap, but they were sufficient
to protect the soldiers against the effects of a surprise. As the whole
building was considerably less than forty feet high, its summit was
concealed by the tops of the trees, except from the eyes of those who
had reached the interior of the island. On that side the view was open
from the upper loops, though bushes even there, more or less, concealed
the base of the wooden tower.

The object being purely defence, care had been taken to place the
blockhouse so near an opening in the limestone rock that formed the base
of the island as to admit of a bucket being dropped into the water, in
order to obtain that great essential in the event of a siege. In order
to facilitate this operation, and to enfilade the base of the building,
the upper stories projected several feet beyond the lower in the manner
usual to blockhouses, and pieces of wood filled the apertures cut in the
log flooring, which were intended as loops and traps. The communications
between the different stories were by means of ladders. If we add that
these blockhouses were intended as citadels for garrisons or settlements
to retreat to, in the cases of attacks, the general reader will obtain a
sufficiently correct idea of the arrangements it is our wish to explain.

But the situation of the island itself formed its principal merit as a
military position. Lying in the midst of twenty others, it was not
an easy matter to find it; since boats might pass quite near, and, by
glimpses caught through the openings, this particular island would be
taken for a part of some other. Indeed, the channels between the islands
which lay around the one we have been describing were so narrow that it
was even difficult to say which portions of the land were connected,
or which separated, even as one stood in the centre, with the express
desire of ascertaining the truth. The little