Comte de Paris, History of the Civil War in America. Vol. 4.
Henry Coppee , LL.D., Ed.

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[241] The city, situated on a table-land fifty yards above the level of Holston River, is bounded on the south by this stream, on the east and the west by two brooks with steep shores which were denominated respectively First Creek and Second Creek by settlers doubtless poor in imaginative faculties. Beyond these two streams rise hills completely overlooking the city, and whose possession is consequently necessary to the besieged. The ground dips toward the north. There is in that direction, before coming to the city, a depression parallel with the course of the Holston. The railway runs along this depression, in which were large establishments and the junction of the two lines of railroad called the Virginia and Tennessee and the Tennessee and Georgia. The two brooks flow into this depression of ground, which they cross at right angles to the plane of the horizon. Marshes on the north, the river on the south, and hills on the two other sides therefore constitute the four faces of the defence. The breastworks erected by the cavalry on the left bank of the Holston protected from sudden attack the heights which on that side commanded the city: the enemy could not seriously threaten them. In order to render impracticable the approaches from the north the flowing waters of the two brooks were dammed: there were thus formed in the depression two veritable lakes, separated only by a strip of land on which were the station and shops. Rifle-pits for the shelter of the sharpshooters were dug in front of the overflow; in the rear several batteries for field artillery were built and connected by strong breastworks. The eastern face seemed to be but little exposed, for the First Creek formed along a length of fifteen hundred yards an obstacle which would have cut in two all the lines the besiegers might have tried to establish. Still, the three heights to the eastward of Knoxville had been fortified; a large work of defence, closed at the gorge, rose from the principal elevation, called Temperance Hill. Colonel Babcock had applied himself particularly to the defence of the western face. In the centre of it were old Confederate works which after the death of Sanders received the name of that gallant soldier. Situated at a little over half a mile from the city, upon a commanding rise of ground between the railway and the London road, Fort Sanders was open at the gorge, and composed of three bastioned fronts facing north-west, south-west,