commencing an immediate perambulation of the house and premises, in search of anything she could pick up. This sometimes brought her into odd positions, and gave us trouble. Where are we? Oh, loading the money for our start from Oyarzun. Just as I was coming out of the court-yard, a soldier entered it, with a look of execration, muttering. Didn’t at all like appearances, when I got into the road. All the men looked sulky; the muleteers, perfectly vicious. The loading was going on, but without method, and not by any means with despatch. Of all the party, the only man that didn’t show ill blood was Corporal Fraser. He was doing his best, but looked serious, and somewhat nonplussed. The cause of all was soon apparent. The captain, for some reason or other, had worked himself into a perfect fury, to which he was giving expression in a regular stream of abuse and imprecations; discharging it indiscriminately on the muleteers and the escort, in Portuguese, Spanish, and English, as though he had rifled and ransacked the vocabularies for every bullying and blasphemous expression in the three languages. He had already got matters into a little bit of a mess—was ordering, counter-ordering—bothering the whole party out of their wits—in short, obstructing everything, and thereby indefinitely delaying our departure. This particularly enraged the muleteers: for you must know, first, they take the packing upon themselves, understand their business, and like to be let alone at it; secondly, they have a notion that nothing ruins their mules like keeping a beast standing, when once he has got his load on his back; and some of the first loaded were a couple of hours in this predicament, before we got off. We started at last, and passed through Oyarzun in no very military order: soldiers, mules, and muleteers, all jumbled together, like beef, pork, onions, and mutton-chops, in a Saturday’s pie. Fraser’s smartness saved us more than once from a jam, as we threaded the narrow street; and at length we emerged on the high road to St Jean de Luz. Although, in our transition to French from Spanish ground, we mounted not to the regions of perpetual snows, we did certainly pass over some very high ground, both before and after crossing the Bidassoa; and our second elevation gave us a splendid prospect of the fertile plains of France. “Shan’t want for nothing to eat, sir,” said Jones, “when we gits down there, sir. Shocking bad country, Spain, for poor soldiers, sir. Starvation country, I calls it, sir. Nothing but lean ration beef, as tough as hides, sir; and couldn’t always get that, sir. Dreadful hard work up these hills, sir. Got a bullet in my leg, sir.”