were fresh, delighted to escape from their cramped quarters on shipboard, and, trotting and cantering through the many turns of the muddy lanes, we soon skirted the village of Southminster, and began to mount the high ground between it and a little place called Steeple.
"Here, just north of a steading known as Batt's Farm, is the highest point on the peninsula formed by the Blackwater and Crouch Rivers. Though it is only 132 ft. above sea-level, the surrounding ground is so flat that a perfect panorama was spread before us. We could not distinguish Burnham, which was six miles or more to the southward, and hidden by slight folds of the ground and the many trees which topped the hedgerows, but the Blackwater and its creeks were in full view, and about seven miles to the north-west the towers and spires of Maldon, our principal objective in the first instance, stood up like grey pencillings on the sky-line. Our signallers soon got to work, and in a very few minutes picked up those of the Northern Division, who had established a station on a church tower about two miles to our north-east, at St. Lawrence. They reported a successful landing at Bradwell, and that the Ægir had gone up in the direction of Maldon with the 3rd Marine Battalion, who were being towed up in their flats by steam pinnaces.
"I think, my dear Neuhaus, that it would be as well if I now gave you some general idea of our scheme of operations, so far as it is known to me, in order that you may be the better able to follow my further experiences by the aid of the one-inch English ordnance map which you will have no difficulty in procuring from Berlin.
"As I have already said, Maldon is our first objective. It is situated at the head of the navigable portion of the Blackwater, and in itself—situated as it is on rising grounds suitable for defence, and surrounded to the north and north-west with a network of river and canal—offers a suitable position to check the preliminary
