CHAPTER V.-- FRIEDRICH PUSHES FORWARD TOWARDS BRIEG AND NEISSE.
Ohlau is a pleasant little Town, two marches southeast of Breslau; with the Ohlau River on one side, and the Oder on the other; capable of some defence, were there a garrison.

Brieg the important Fortress, still on the Oder, is some fifteen miles beyond Ohlau; after which, bending straight south and quitting Oder, Neisse the still more important may be thirty miles:--from Breslau to Neisse, by this route (which is BOW, not STRING), sixty-five or seventy miles.

One of my Topographers yields this Note, if readers care for it:-- "Ohlau River, an insignificant drab-colored stream, rises well south of Breslau, about Strehlen; makes, at first, direct eastward towards the Oder; and then, when almost close upon it, breaks off to north, and saunters along, irregularly parallel to Oder, for twenty miles farther, before it can fall fairly in.

To this circumstance both Breslau and a Town of Ohlau owe their existence; Towns, both of them, 'between the waters,' and otherwise well seated; Ohlau sheltering itself in the attempted outfall of its little river; Breslau clustering itself about the actual outfall: both very defensible places in the old rude time, and good for trade in all times.

Both Oder and Ohlau Rivers have split and spread themselves into islands and deltas a good deal, at their place of meeting; and even have changed their courses, and cut out new channels for themselves, in the sandy country; making a very intricate watery network of a site for Breslau: and indeed the Ohlau River here, for centuries back, has been compelled into wide meanderings, mere filling of rampart-ditches, so that it issues quite obscurely, and in an artificial engineered condition, at Breslau." Ohlau had been expected to make some defence; General Browne having thrown 300 men into it, and done what he could for the works.