As I have already remarked, two of our companies alternately did duty in front of our position, at Fort Conception. The orders issued to the officer commanding the picquet were to blow up the fort immediately on the approach of the enemy, for which purpose it was undermined in several places by the artillerymen, who were left to fire the mines when the order should be given. On the morning of the 19th of July, our company and another were on duty at this point, and it was generally expected we should be attacked on the morrow. I think the intelligence was brought by a deserter. The fort contained a great quantity of good English rum and biscuit, which Captain O’Hare allowed the men of both companies to help themselves to and fill their canteens, upon their promise, which they kept, not to get drunk. The following morning, before it was scarcely light, the enemy proved the correctness of our anticipations by advancing upon us in heavy columns, preceded by their light troops. The command was instantly given to fire the mines, and we retired upon our division. A few minutes after our quitting the fort, its beautiful proportions, which had excited the admiration of so many beholders, was broken, as by the shock of an earthquake, into a blackened heap of ruin. We retreated under the walls of Almeida, where we halted until the 23rd, when at night we experienced a storm that for violence, while it lasted, exceeded anything I had ever before beheld. The lightning, thunder, wind, and rain were absolutely awful. With a few other men, I had sought shelter in the hollow of a rock, where we were not a little amazed at the numbers of snakes and lizards which the occasional gleams of lightning exhibited to us running about in all directions, as though the tempest had the effect of bringing them all from their holes.