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| A large Gabion. |
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| Chevaux-de-frise. |
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ends and intermediate points, to aid in raising batteries, filling ditches, etc.; Chevaux-de-frise, a piece of timber
traversed with wooden spikes, used especially as a defence against cavalry; the Abatis, a row of the large branches of trees, sharpened and laid close together, points outward, with the butts pinned to the ground; the Praise, a defence of pointed sticks, fastened into the ground at such an incline as to bring the points breast-high ;--all these were fashioned by the engineer corps, in vast numbers, when the army was besieging Petersburg in 1864.
But; the crowning work of this
corps, as it always seemed to me, the department of their labor for which, I believe, they will be the longest remembered, was that of pontonbridge laying.
The word ponton, or pontoon, is borrowed from both the Spanish and French languages, which, in turn, derive it from the parent Latin, pons,
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