For what the men said gave us little concern; but to be taxed and taunted for cowardice by the Spanish ladies was most galling. Even my handsome dark-eyed Clementeria, sister to the Guerilla lover, who seemed so much attached to me, and with whom I spent many a moonlight night serenading to the Spanish guitar, and who first taught me to use the castanets in the Spanish dance—even she, with all her pretended love, refused me a buss at our last moment of parting, though I used all my eloquence, welding the Spanish, French, and English together in pleading my cause. All had no effect on the hard-hearted _Mosa_. Her last words were: “Begone, you cowardly English, you have not the courage to fight the enemy of our country: those who have butchered my dear father and brother,” were her last words. After a harassing march through a mountainous country we joined the remainder of our army at Salamanca. There we took up our quarters for a few days in a convent, which exhibited such a loathsome picture of filth as to be almost unendurable. In consequence of our men having torn up a part of the balustrades for firing, a young officer of the third battalion fell down a height of fifty feet, and was killed on the spot. On the second morning after our arrival we again proceeded towards Rodrigo. The rain fell in torrents, and from the heaviness of the roads, which were in many places a foot deep in mud, most of our men lost their shoes, and were obliged to march barefooted. Among this number I was unfortunately included. When we had reached our halting-ground for the night, our prospect was most desolate. Wet to the skin—without fire or shelter—and at the same time possessed of a ravenous appetite, with nothing to satisfy it, formed one of the _disagreeables_ so often attendant upon our life in the Peninsula—to say nothing of incessant duty and fatigue. It was these sufferings, in fact, I am convinced, that oftentimes rendered our men so callous about death, at different periods during the war, as some men, from the privations they endured, wished to be shot, and exposed themselves in action purposely.