Harper's New Monthly Magazine Volume 21 June to November 1860 . , as well as from the character oftheir intrenchments, so far as we understandthem, it is safe to conclude that all parts of thiswork were the best calculated to secure the ob-jects of the builders under the modes of attackand defense then practiced. On the assumptionthat the embankments were crowned with pali-sades, it is easy to believe that it afforded entiresecurity against rude or savage foes. The devices resorted to in this work for pro-tecting the principal entrances to it are repeatedwith slight modifications in other work
Harper's New Monthly Magazine Volume 21 June to November 1860 . , as well as from the character oftheir intrenchments, so far as we understandthem, it is safe to conclude that all parts of thiswork were the best calculated to secure the ob-jects of the builders under the modes of attackand defense then practiced. On the assumptionthat the embankments were crowned with pali-sades, it is easy to believe that it afforded entiresecurity against rude or savage foes. The devices resorted to in this work for pro-tecting the principal entrances to it are repeatedwith slight modifications in other works, and arefound also in some of the military structures ofthe Mexicans. Figure 4 is a plan of the greatentrance to a defensive work, in the same valleywith that above described, seven miles distantto the northward. As they approach each other,on either side, the walls curve inwardly, on aradius of seventy-five feet, forming a true circleinterrupted only by the gate-ways. Within thearea thus formed, is a small, complete circle, 24 HAEPERS NEW MONTHLY 4.—PLAN OF ENTKANCE. one hundred feet in diam-eter ; outside of which, andcovering the gate-way, is amound, e, forty feet in diam-eter and five feet high. Thepassage between the moundand embankment on eachside is about six feet gate-way, or opening,d, is twenty feet wide. Theletters /f indicate the fosse or ditch which sur-rounds the work, but which is interrupted at theentrance. The wall which Cortez encountered inhis march on the city of Mexico, covering theeastern approach to the Tlascallan territories, isdescribed by Bernal Diaz as six miles long, withan entrance formed by the ends lapping round oneach other in the form of semicircles having acommon centre. And De Bry, in describing thedefenses of the Eloridian Indians, affirms thatthey were constructed of palisades, which at theentrance were drawn in, after the fashion of asnails shell. Similar devices were resorted toby the Romans, in their castra stativa
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