ts ascribed to it.[199] In later years a stairway
led to the quarters of the commanding officer, but the wagon road which
crept upwards along the sandstone wall--"nearly as white as
loaf-sugar"[200]--where the swallows flew in and out from their holes,
gained the summit at the rear of the fort.

Following the road through the gate, and passing between the buildings
to the center of the parade ground, the recruit probably paused to look
about him.[201] Visible in the openings between the buildings was the
stone wall about ten feet high which surrounded the barracks, quarters,
and storehouses. This wall took the place of the picket-stockade which
was so prominent a feature in earlier and ruder fortifications.
Conforming to the arrangement of the buildings which it enclosed, the
wall was diamond-shaped, one point being at the edge of the
promontory where the valley of the Minnesota River met that of the
Mississippi River. A second point was on the edge of the steep bluff
which rose from the Mississippi. A third point, at a distance of about
four hundred and fifty feet directly opposite the second, was on the
summit of the Minnesota bluff. The fourth point was situated on the
level ground of the plateau, at a distance of about seven hundred feet
from the first point.

As he stood in the middle of the parade ground and gazed beyond the pump
and the magazine at the western or fourth point, the recruit saw rising
to a height twice that of the wall, the Old Round Tower. To-day this
tower is a vine-clad relic--a vestige remaining from the days of the
past. But to the soldier of Old Fort Snelling it was a more practical
structure--a place of lookout from which he was often to scan the swells
of the prairie for approaching Indians or returning comrades. At the
second and third points were blockhouses--buildings of stone, each
giving a view of the river below it. At the first point there was also a
tower--a wooden lookout platform at the very edge of the precipice from
which was visible the landscape surrounding the fort.

But the soldier was doubtless more interested in the buildings in which
he was to live. The barracks for the men were under the north wall and
consisted of two buildings one story in height. The larger of these,
which was intended to accommodate two companies was divided
into sets, each set having on the main floor an orderly-room and three
squad-rooms, while below in the basement were a mess-room and a kitche