Exactly to the west of Tripoli, and within rifle-shot of its walls, stood three steep spurs of hill, known as Trikorpha. The same stir of primeval forces which threw up the crag on which Valtetzi stood, must have cast them up bubbling and basaltic through some volcanic vent-hole, long after the great range behind was fixed. They were like the ragged peaks of slag cast out by a gaseous coal consuming in the fire, and, standing some four hundred feet above the plain, were yet most conveniently near the town. Nearly at the top gushed out a riotous cold stream from the dark lips of the rocks, fringed with shivering maidenhair and dripping moss, and behind on the mountain was good pasturage for flocks. Lower down, where the stream-bed widened, burst a luxuriant patch of oleanders and stiff cushions of cistus and _spina sacra_; but the heights themselves, save for the water-course, were barren. The three peaks were joined to each other by a sharp rocky ridge, but all were isolated from the mountains on one side and the plain on the other.
Petrobey set about securing this position without delay, though, in truth, the Turks were in no temper to prevent him, and the work sped apace. The place was nigh impregnable, and the walls, of rough blocks of stone gathered from the peaks, were made as much with a view to clearing the ground for the soldiers' huts as to providing the place with a defensible wall. From here, too, by night they could push their devastating raids right under the walls of Tripoli itself, for it was but a stone-cast to the foot of their eyry; and early in June the larger part of the men encamped at Valtetzi took up their quarters in this new nest, swarming there as in spring the overfull hive sends out its colonists. The Argive corps remained in the old nest, under the command of Demetri, who the year before had been mayor of Nauplia, while in the new position the Mainats, under Petrobey, occupied the northernmost of the three peaks; Nicholas, with a regiment chiefly of Arcadian troops, the southernmost; and in the centre a smaller body from the parts about Sparta, under the command of a local chieftain, whom they had followed, one Poniropoulos, a man as crooked in mind and morality as a warped vine-stem, but who, as he was chosen leader by his contingent, was of necessity in command.