TIIR MAIN FIGHT. 71 tar in a north-easterly direction between naked chap. crags on either side ; and, though smooth, or _____ gently sloping home down to the brink of the precipice, it there ends at last with absolute suddenness in a sheer wall of vertical rock.* The cleft which divides the Kitspur from the lukerman Tusk is St Clement's Gorge. The English never treated Mount lukerman as Tiiebrush- -, ,. . . . 1 • T /• 1 • wood cloth- a deiensive position which (m order to leave its ing Mount Inkermau. assailants exposed to view and to fire) should be cleared of obstructions ; and (except upon spots neaT the camp, which had been stripped by men toiling after fuel •}-) the ground at the time of the fight was in most places clad with a stunted oak brushwood. This grew very scant on the top- lands, but abundant on most of the steeps. In some places, it reached a man's knees, in others, his waist or his shoulders, and in others again surrounded him with boughs 9 or 10 feet high. The high rock-built topland or spine of Mount Tho roafi? lukerman was so free from difficult steeps, so thinly coated with soil, and so sparsely inter- rupted by the there puny stems of the underwood, that guns once brought up to the brow could be easily moved on along the downs ; but Nature had placed graver hindrance in the way of ascent, and it was only upon roads made by man that
- No maps or plans can adequately express the character-
istics of this spur, and it was only on seeing it in 1869 from the valley of the Tchernaya that I apprehended its singular form. t The parts of the bushes taken for fuel wei-e the roots These our soldiers used to call ' clumps.'
