Meanwhile, on taking stock of his situation at Elvas on March 12th, Wellington was reasonably satisfied. Not only was the greater part of his army in hand, and the rest rapidly coming up, but the siege material had escaped all the perils of storms by sea and rocky defiles by land, and was much where he had expected it to be. The material which moved by road, the sixteen 24-lb. howitzers which had marched on January 30th, and a convoy of 24-pounder and 18-pounder travelling-carriages and stores, which went off on February 2, had both come to hand at Elvas, the first on February 25th, the second on March 3, and were ready parked on the glacis. This was a wonderful journey over mountain roads in the most rainy season of the year. The sea-borne guns had also enjoyed a surprising immunity from winter storms; Dickson, when he arrived at Setubal on February 10th, found that the 24-pounders from Oporto had arrived thirty-six hours before him, and on the 14th was beginning to forward them by river-boat to Alcacer do Sal, from where they were drawn by oxen to Elvas, along with their ammunition[251]. The only difficulty which arose was that Wellington had asked Admiral Berkeley, commanding the squadron at Lisbon, to lend him, as a supplementary train, twenty 18-pound ship guns. The admiral sent twenty Russian guns (leavings of Siniavins’s squadron captured in the Tagus at the time of the Convention of Cintra). Dickson protested, as these pieces were of a different calibre from the British 18-pounder, and would not take its shot. The admiral refused to disgarnish his own flagship, which happened to be the only vessel at Lisbon with home-made 18-pounders on board. Dickson had to take the Russian guns perforce, and to cull for their ammunition all the Portuguese stores at Lisbon, where a certain supply of round shot that fitted was discovered, though many thousands had to be rejected as ‘far too low.’ On March 8th the whole fifty-two guns of the siege-train were reported ready, and the officer commanding the Portuguese artillery at Elvas announced that he could even find a small supplement, six old heavy English iron guns of the time of George II, which had been in store there since General Burgoyne’s expedition of 1761, besides some Portuguese guns of similar calibre. The old brass guns which had made such bad practice in 1811 were not this time requisitioned--fortunately they were not needed. The garrison of Elvas had for some weeks been at work making gabions and fascines, which were all ready, as was also a large consignment of cutting-tools from the Lisbon arsenal, and a train of twenty-two pontoons. Altogether the material was in a wonderful state of completeness. [251] For details see Jones, _Sieges of the Peninsula_, Appendix in vol. i. pp. 421-5, and the _Dickson Papers_, ed. Leslie, for Feb. 1812.