Between the Traverses

A cut between two high sodded traverses, shot pyramids stacked either side of the passage, an iron door standing open in the left-hand mound, and a small figure at the far arch to give the earth its scale. The third of the trio of 1865 plates carrying the contradictory Fort Johnson (Morris Island) title.

Whoever engineered this passage built for the bombardment the works had already lived through: earth deep enough to swallow a hit, magazines behind iron, ammunition kept close to the guns but under the lee of the mounds. It is the architecture of the harbor's last two years, photographed in the first spring it was obsolete.