After a hurried ride over the well-known positions of the third of July, we separated; Castelermo and I to pursue our journey to St. Eufemio, and Lascelles to continue his to General Regnier’s camp: he was the bearer of a copy of Sir John Stuart’s third proclamation, dated 18th July, and issued in consequence of the barbarous cruelties exercised by the French troops on those Italian royalists who unhappily fell into their hands. In that official document, after a long statement of appalling facts, Sir John reminded the French general that three thousand of their soldiers were prisoners to the British arms, together with many of Buonaparte’s well-known partisans. "If, therefore," concluded the manifesto, "such violence is not put an end to, for the future, I shall not only deem myself justified, but compelled by my duty, to have recourse to the severe but indispensable law of REPRISALS!" This determined threat had some effect on the iron-hearted Regnier, and for a time we heard less of slaughtered peasantry and priests shot before their altars; of nuns and poor country girls torn from their homes and hiding-places, to become worse than slaves in the camps and bivouacs of the French: who were yet entrenched at Cassano, awaiting the advance of Massena’s division. Not choosing to be seen so far out of our proper road by any of our troops cantoned in St. Eufemio, or encamped around it, we took a solitary path across the plain towards the villa; and, as there was no ford, we had to swim our horses across the Amato, in a part where the stream was both deep and rapid. We then sought the shelter of an orange-grove, where, having poured the water out of our boots, we passed the noon-time until the intense heat passed away. It was a still and solitary place, where the silence was broken by no ruder sounds than the hum of the bee, the flap of the plover’s wing, the murmur of the Amato, the notes of a shepherd’s zampogna, and the faint tinkling bells of his flock afar off on the green and verdant mountains. We remained nearly two hours in that delightful grove, through the thick foliage of which the hot rays of the sun never penetrated: the shining river swept slowly past us to the sea, with its smooth surface glittering in the sunlight, and the whole air was fragrant with the perfume of the wild flowers blooming among its sedges, and the orange-trees which shaded its rocky banks. The ruddy fruit hung in rich golden clusters above us; and though, from the appearance of some of the trees, the winds of a hundred years had swept their branches, they were yet, in a "green old age," bending beneath their load of produce. The Calabrian knows well that the oldest trees bear the sweetest oranges: those that are soft and juicy, with thin skins: the thickly rinded are always the fruit of young saplings, and are seldom cared for by the orange-gatherer.