distance of several
miles, enclosing the peninsula formed by the bend of the river Medway.
Forster says:--

[Illustration: Navy Pay-Office, Chatham.]

"By Rochester and the Medway to the Chatham lines was a favourite walk
with Charles Dickens. He would turn out of Rochester High Street through
the Vines, . . . would pass round by Fort Pitt, and coming back by
Frindsbury would bring himself by some cross-fields again into the
high-road."

The Chatham lines are locally understood as referring to a piece of
ground about three or four hundred yards square, near Fort Pitt, used as
an exercising-ground for the military.

Chapter IV. of _Pickwick_, "describing a field day and bivouac," refers
to the Chatham lines as the place where the review was held, on the
third day of the visit of the Pickwickians to this neighbourhood, and
which (having been relieved of the company of their quondam friend, Mr.
Jingle, who had caused at least one of the party so much anxiety) they
all attended, possibly at Mr. Pickwick's suggestion, as he is stated to
have been "an enthusiastic admirer of the army." The programme is thus
referred to:--

"The whole population of Rochester and the
adjoining towns, rose from their beds at an early
hour of the following morning, in a state of the
utmost bustle and excitement. A grand review was
to take place upon the lines. The manoeuvres of
half a dozen regiments were to be inspected by the
eagle eye of the commander-in-chief; temporary
fortifications had been erected, the citadel was
to be attacked and taken, and a mine was to be
sprung."

The evolutions of this "ceremony of the utmost grandeur and importance"
proceed. Mr. Pickwick and his two friends (Mr. Tupman "had suddenly
disappeared, and was nowhere to be found"), who are told to keep back,
get hustled and pushed by the crowd, and the unoffending Mr. Snodgrass,
who is in "the very extreme of human torture," is derided and asked
"vere he vos a shovin' to." Subsequently they get hemmed in by the
crowd, "are exposed to a galling fire of blank cartridges, and harassed
by the operations of the military." Mr. Pickwick loses his hat, and not
only regains that useful article of dress, but finds the lost Mr.
Tupman, and the Pickwickians make the acquaintance of old Wardle and his
hospitable family from Dingley Dell, by whom they are heartily
entertained