out like a tree into many ramifications, common sense rises in opposition, and demands that the expression should be restricted to its true value.
In order to develop a system out of the expression, it was necessary to resort to something more distinct and absolute than the practical, but certainly very indefinite, meaning attaching to the term in the narrations of generals when speaking of their military enterprises. And from amongst all its various relations, that of high ground was chosen.
Where a road traverses a mountain ridge, we thank heaven when we get to the top and have only to descend. This feeling so natural to a single traveller is still more so in the case of an army All difficulties seem to be overcome, and so they are indeed in most instances; we find that the descent is easy, and we are conscious of a kind of feeling of superiority over any one who would stop us; we have an extensive view over the country, and command it with a look beforehand. Thus the highest point on a road over a mountain is always considered to possess a decisive importance, and it does in fact in the majority of cases, but by no means in all. Such points are very often described in the despatches of generals by the name of key-points; but certainly again in a somewhat different and generally in a more restricted sense. This idea has been the starting point of a false theory (of which, perhaps, Lloyd may be regarded as the founder); and on this account, elevated points from which several roads descend into the adjacent country, came to be regarded as the keypoints of the country—as points which command the country. It was natural that this view should amalgamate itself with one very nearly connected with it, that of a systematic defence of mountains, and that the matter should thus be driven still further into the regions of the illusory; added to which many tactical elements connected with the defence of mountains came into play, and thus the idea of the highest point in the road was soon abandoned, and the highest point generally of the whole mountain system, that is the point of the watershed, was substituted for it as the key of the country.