of the sap-roller-in the trench cavaliers. This work took the 24th and 25th and the night of the 26th of June, when early in the morning of 26th, the enemy sprung two mines near my counter-mines crushing in the roofs badly. Some gabions in the trench cavaliers were thrown down; but the charge of the mines was too small to throw up any crater which we might have taken advantage of. The mines acted a la camouflet, which was probably the enemy's intention. They anyhow filled our mines and disintegrated the soil around to such an extent that further mining at that point was out of the question. All the time we worked in this sap the working parties were harassed by shells thrown over into our saps, but fortunately nobody lost his life. Even the spiring of the enemy's mines at the time, a few men were covered by earth and gabions falling on them from the parapets, but they extricated themselves without material injury. During the time that this work was going on in the immediate front I had constructed small traverses in the main approach, and under their shelter started a new sap-roller into the sap. The intention was to mislead the enemy, making him believe that we had abandoned the work in his immediate front and retired to start something else. At storming column, it acting as an additional sally-port. The infantry details I always employed in widening the trenches in my rear, forming communications to the works on my right and left flank, carrying siege material to the front, and making general improvements in the trenches, such as strengthening weak points,&c. All the fire of the enemy during the nights we always returned promptly with hand-grenades from our trench cavaliers, and the howitzer battery in our rear and left, acting in accordance with me, shelled the enemy handsomely in his ditches. Early on June 26, I received Special Orders, number 166 (annexed here in copy)*To continue the work in front was out of the question, for reasons previously stated. I therefore started, after constructing traverse and increasing the height of traverse and so as not to be looked into from top of enemy's parapet (a main gallery designated in dotted lines on the annexed sketch). +

I knew, from the information drawn from a deserted (an engineer soldier of the enemy, who had worked at the bastion in my front), that the enemy had some more mines ready and charged in my front besides those which he sprung, as previously stated, and I therefore went on a circuitous route, to keep even out of their radius of rupture, away under the main ditch under the enemy's parapet. Proceeding according to the distance laid down in the previous sketch, with a fall of 1 foot in the right side, where I had to run out an air-hole obliquely to the rear, the candles being extinguished by the extreme heat and foulness of the air. After running 16 feet farther I arrived at the bottom of the hollow, and went out cautiously 17 feet (rise 1 in 3), landing behind a large, heavy log lying across the gully. Here I established a new dump the old dump in the sap becoming too inconvenient on account of distance of wheeling. This new dump and air hole brought plenty of circulation of air into the mine, and, making a direct turn at almost right angles against the enemy's works, I proceeded 70 feet,

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*Omitted, as unimportant. +See opposite PAGE .

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