Tripoli itself lay about eight miles to the northeast, and at present the whole body of Greeks was occupied in fortifying the post they had taken. A village, largely Turkish, had stood on the spot, and the demolition of the houses went on from daybreak to nightfall to make material for building up a defensive wall. The soldiers, meantime, as their barracks were converted into fortifications, substituted for them huts made of poles woven in with osiers and brushwood, similar to those they used on Taygetus. The walls, it must be confessed, presented a curiously unworkmanlike aspect--here and there a course of regular square stones would be interrupted by a couple of Byzantine columns from the mosque, or the capital of a Venetian pillar in which a strange human-faced lion looked out from a nest of conventional acanthus leaves. Farther on in the same row would come a packet of roof tiles plastered together with mud, and a plane-tree standing in the line of the wall was pressed into the service, and supplied the place of a big stone for eight upright courses. Above that it had been sawn off, and the next section of the trunk being straight made a wooden coping for five yards of wall. Here a chimney-pot filled with earth and stones took its place among solider materials; here a hearthstone placed on end, with two inches of iron support for the stewing-pot, staring foolishly out into vacancy. Then came a section where the builders had drawn from a richer quarry, and a fine slab of porphyry and two _rosso antico_ pillars formed an exclusive coterie in the midst of rough blocks of limestone. But though heterogeneous and uncouth, the walls were stout and high, and, as Petrobey said, their business was not to build a pretty harem to please the women.
Inside, a hardy sufficiency was the note. The soldiers' huts, though small, would stand a good deal of rough weather; they were built squarely in rows, camp-wise, and the floors were shingled with gravel from a quarry close by. Two houses only had been kept, in one of which were stored the arms, in the other the ammunition, Petrobey and Nicholas, as before, occupying huts exactly like those tenanted by the common soldiers. The mules and herds of sheep and goats were driven out every morning under an armed escort to pasture on the hills near, and penned to the south of the camp for the night. Food was plentiful, and the men seemed well content, for the booty already taken was very considerable.