Townshend first viewed the Ottoman lines by walking up an observation tower, which he called "a rickety structure of wooden scaffolding, like a lighthouse on the sands". He described how flooding by the Tigris river was "giving the landscape the air of Lake Superior or Michigan in the United States. Sand-hill islands appeared in the waters. They were Turkish redoubts. In fact, I had reason to think that Wolfe's job at Quebec was a fool to mine". Townshend wrote that he wanted use the "Principle of the Principle Mass in a turning movement against the redoubts from the westward", but all of the ground had been flooded. He rejected the idea of a frontal attack as "the most unsatisfactory and costly manner of attack". Townshend wrote: