Beyond Irun, we passed over an irregular eminence, which had been the scene of a sharp conflict with the enemy. Nothing, however, now indicated the field of combat, save a few dead horses, that lay scattered on the bare side of a hill. “What are those smaller animals,” said I to Jones, “lying about there, among the horses? Can’t be goats, can they?” “Thim’s dogs, sir,” said Jones. “They goes and gits a good blowout off the horses, sir; then they crawls a little way off, and lies down a bit, jest to choe the quid, sir; and then they goes back again, and takes another pull, sir. That’s jest how three or four on us did at Vittoria, sir, when we come upon the Frinch Ginneral’s dinner, sir, which he hadn’t time to stop and eat sir. Please sir, it’s not correct, what the men jeers me about the goats where I comes from, sir. Niver see’d nobody a-riding of a goat in the Principality, sir; nayther man, nor yet woman, sir; no, nor a babby nayther, sir; let alone a clergyman, sir.” Perhaps, my dear reader, as this is our first day on the road, I may as well give you here a description of our regular order of march; that is, so far as we marched in any order at all. We had eighty mules, then, in twenty strings, of four mules each. The muzzle of the second mule was connected with the _albarda_ (or pack-saddle) of the first, by a thong of leather. The third mule was attached to the second in like manner, and the fourth to the third. Each of these strings of mules had its own muleteer—twenty muleteers in all. The twenty were divided into two parties of ten; and over each of these ten was a sort of master-muleteer, called a Capataz. Of the four mules in each string, three carried money, and the fourth carried nothing but his _albarda_. We had thus twenty unloaded mules, and sixty charged with treasure: that is, fifty-eight with dollars, and two with doubloons. Now, as each mule carried two boxes, and each box contained two bags of a thousand, I think you will find, reckoning the dollar at only 4s. 6d. (the value at which it was issued to the troops,) and reckoning sixteen dollars to the doubloon, that we were marching to headquarters to the tune of eighty-one thousand pounds sterling. If, however, you prefer calculating the dollar at what it was then and there worth in buying bills on England—say from 6s. 6d. to 7s. 6d.—why then, of course, the value of our load comes to so much the more. What a catch for a Frenchman—one of our mules!