l be little short of four miles; the breadth of the Chain
is nowhere one mile,--which is its grand defect as a Camp: 'too narrow
for manoeuvring in.' Here, atop and on the three sides of this Block
of Knolls, was fought the furious Battle of Kunersdorf [to be fought
to-morrow], one of the most furious ever known. A Block of Knolls
memorable ever since.

"To all appearance: it was once some big Island or chain of Islands
in the Oder deluges: it is still cut with sudden hollows,--KUHGRUND
(Cow-Hollow), TIEFE WEG (Deep Way), and westernmost of all, and
most important for us here, HOHLE GRUND (Big Hollow, let us call it;
'LOUDON'S Hollow' people subsequently called it);--and is everywhere
strangely tumbled up into knolls blunt or sharp, the work of primeval
Oder in his rages. In its highest knolls,--of which let readers note
specially the Spitzberg, the Muhlberg, the Judenberg,--it rises nowhere
to 150 feet; perhaps the general height of it may be about 100. On each
side of it, especially on the north, the Country is of most intricate
character: bushy, scraggy, with brooklets or muddy oozings wandering
about, especially with a thing called the HUNERFLIESS (Hen-Floss), which
springs in the eastern woods, and has inconceivable difficulty to
get into Oder,--if it get at all! This was a sore Floss to Friedrich
to-morrow. Hen-Floss struggles, painfully meandering and oozing, along
the northern side (sometimes close, sometimes not) of our Chain of
Knolls: along the south side of it (in our time, through the middle
of it) goes the Highway to Reppen ["From that Highway will his attack
come!" thought the Russians, always till to-day]: on the north, to
Leissow, to Trettin," where Friedrich is now on survey, "go various
wheel-tracks, but no firm road. A most intricate unlovely Country.
Withered bent-grasses, heath, perhaps gorse, and on both sides a great
deal of straggling Forest-wood, reaching eastward, and especially
southward, for many miles.

"For the rest," to our ill-luck in this place, "the Battlefield of
Kunersdorf has had a peculiar fate in the world; that of being blown
away by the winds! The then scene of things exists no longer; the
descriptions in the Old Books are gone hopelessly irrecognizable. In our
time, there is not anywhere a tract more purely of tumbled sand, than
all this between Kunersdorf and Dam Vorstadt; and you judge, without aid
of record or tradition, that it is greatly altered for the worse since
Fried