A small rustic gate from the station led in the direction of the Mound.  From necessity, I began a tramp through the rain alone, no conveyance being obtainable.  The soil of Belgium here being alluvial, a little rain soon makes a great deal of mud and little rains at this season (January) are frequent.  Along a small unpaved mud-deep road, having meanwhile been joined by a peasant with a two wheeled cart drawn by a single mule, I was soon hastening onward toward the Mound which was growing more and more visible on the horizon.  The road soon turned away, however, but a path led toward the mound.  The peasant took the road and I the path, which led into a little clump of houses, where were boys about their morning duties, and dogs that barked vigorously until one of the boys to whom I had spoken silenced them.

Passing onward through streets not more than six feet wide, along neatly trimmed hedges and past small cottage doorways, I soon entered an open plain, but in a crippled state with heavy mud-covered shoes.  Mud fairly obliterated all trace of leather.  With this burden, and wet to the skin with rain, there rose far ahead of me that historic mound, and at last I stood at its base alone, there in the midst of one of the greatest battlefields history records, soon to forget in the momentary joys of a beefsteak breakfast that man had ever done anything in this world except eat and drink.

I must borrow an illustration—­Victor Hugo’s letter A. The apex is Mount St. Jean, the right hand base La Belle Alliance, the left hand base Hougoumont, the cross bar that sunken road which perhaps changed the future of Europe, the two sides broad Belgian roads, paved with square stones and bordered with graceful and lofty poplar trees, their proud heads waving in every breeze that drifts across this undulating plain.  The Lion’s Mound is just below the middle of this cross bar.  Mont St. Jean, La Belle Alliance and Hougoumont, at the three angles of the triangle, are small villages—­scarcely more than hamlets.  All were important points in the fortunes of that memorable 18th of June, 1815.  Hougoumont, with its chateau and wall, in some sense was like a fortress.

Go with me if you will in imagination to the summit of the Lion’s Mound.  A flight of 225 stone steps will take us there, a toilsome ascent in this chilling air and this persistent rain.  Toward Mont St. Jean, the surface of the ground is rolling, the waves of it high enough to conceal standing men from view.  Except the lofty poplars at the road sides, there are no trees.  An admirable place for an army on the defensive, you will at once say, since reserves can be concealed behind the convolutions of the rolling plain.  These convolutions may also serve in the fight as natural fortifications.