that the whole front could be swept by
flank-fires of musketry and grape. Abercromby describes the wall of logs
as between eight and nine feet high;[621] in which case there must have
been a rude _banquette_, or platform to fire from, on the inner side. It
was certainly so high that nothing could be seen over it but the crowns
of the soldiers' hats. The upper tier was formed of single logs, in
which notches were cut to serve as loopholes; and in some places sods
and bags of sand were piled along the top, with narrow spaces to fire
through.[622] From the central part of the line the ground sloped away
like a natural glacis; while at the sides, and especially on the left,
it was undulating and broken. Over this whole space, to the distance of
a musket-shot from the works, the forest was cut down, and the trees
left lying where they fell among the stumps, with tops turned outwards,
forming one vast abattis, which, as a Massachusetts officer says, looked
like a forest laid flat by a hurricane.[623] But the most formidable
obstruction was immediately along the front of the breastwork, where the
ground was covered with heavy boughs, overlapping and interlaced, with
sharpened points bristling into the face of the assailant like the
quills of a porcupine. As these works were all of wood, no vestige of
them remains. The earthworks now shown to tourists as the lines of
Montcalm are of later construction; and though on the same ground, are
not on the same plan.[624]

[Footnote 621: _Abercromby to Harrington, 12 July, 1758._ "At least
eight feet high." Rogers, _Journals_, 116.]

[Footnote 622: A Swiss officer of the Royal Americans, writing on the
14th, says that there were two, and in some parts three, rows of
loopholes. See the letter in _Pennsylvania Archives_, III. 472.]

[Footnote 623: _Colonel Oliver Partridge to his Wife, 12 July, 1758._]

[Footnote 624: A new line of works was begun four days after the battle,
to replace the log breastwork. Malartic, _Journal. Travaux faits a
Carillon, 1758_.]

Here, then, was a position which, if attacked in front with musketry
alone, might be called impregnable. But would Abercromby so attack it?
He had several alternatives. He might attempt the flank and rear of his
enemy by way of the low grounds on the right and left of the plateau, a
movement which the precautions of Montcalm had made difficult, but not
impossible. Or, instead of leaving his artillery idle on the strand of
Lake