"Resolute men have done wonders before now in such a charge, and why not we tomorrow ?" "Have you seen the abattis ?" asked Rogers, in his grim and brusque fashion.
"No," answered Pringle; "I have only heard it described by those who have." "Come, then, and look at it before it be dark," was Rogers' reply; and he, together with Stark, led Fritz and Pringle and Roche along a narrow forest pathway which the Rangers were engaged in widening and improving, ready for the morrow's march, until he was able to show them, from a knoll of rising ground, the nature of the fortification they were to attack upon the morrow.
The French had shown no small skill in the building of this breastwork, which ran along a ridge of high ground behind the fort itself, and commanded the approach towards it from the land side.
The whole forest in the immediate vicinity had been felled.

It bore the appearance of a tract of ground through which a cyclone has whirled its way.

Great numbers of the trees had been dragged up to form the rampart, but there were hundreds of others, as well as innumerable roots and stumps, lugs and heads, lying in confusion all around; and Rogers, pointing towards the encumbered tract just beneath and around the rampart, looked at Pringle and said: "How do you think a bayonet charge is to be rushed over such ground as that?
And what good will our musketry fire be against those tough wooden walls, directed upon a foe we cannot see, but who can pick us off in security from behind their breastwork?
For let me tell you that there is great skill shown in its construction.

On the inside, I doubt not, they can approach close to their loopholes, which you can detect all along, and take easy aim at us; but on this side it is bristling with pointed stakes, twisted boughs, and treetops so arranged as to baffle and hinder any attempt at assault.

As I told your General, his cannon could shatter it in a few hours, if he would but bring them to bear.