The conduct of the Spanish towards the EIGHTY-EIGHTH, after its surrender, was marked by much kindness, and few instances occurred of officers being plundered. Captain M‘Gregor was robbed of his gold watch by a black soldier, but recovered it again three days afterwards, upon pointing out the man to a Spanish officer. The same officer was afterwards introduced by Captain Parker Carroll, who remained in the country as one of the British hostages, to General Liniers, and invited by the General to breakfast. The room in which he was received was decorated with coloured drawings of the different corps of militia and volunteers which had been raised within the last few months, and whose officers appeared to be of all hues and colours, from the real jet black to the mulatto, tawny, and even the pale mestee. The General, who entered freely into conversation with his guest, asked Captain M‘Gregor what he thought of the troops by whose portraitures he was surrounded?—receiving, of course, a complimentary answer, he replied, “Ay, it is _I_ who have done all this for them. Those Spaniards knew nothing of military tactics until I arrived amongst them.” He spoke in terms of high praise of Brigadier-General Beresford, and said they were indebted to that officer for teaching them how to defend the town. On the 10th of July the EIGHTY-EIGHTH re-embarked at Buenos Ayres, and descended the River Plate to Monte Video, at which place it arrived on the 18th; on the 8th of August it sailed with the first division of the army for England, and, after a tedious and boisterous passage, made Spithead on the 5th, and landed at Portsmouth on the 8th of November, 1807. During the voyage it lost two officers by death, Lieutenant Lawson and Ensign Jackson. In February, 1807, while the regiment was abroad engaged in the arduous services just detailed, its Colonel, General John Reid,[3] died, and was succeeded in the command by W. Carr Beresford, at that time Senior Lieutenant-Colonel of the regiment, with the rank of Colonel in the army. Such an instance of promotion is unusual in the service at the present period, and must be considered, therefore, as highly complimentary, not only to Colonel Beresford, but also to the regiment of which he had been for so many years the acting commander. [Sidenote: 1808.] Soon after its arrival in England the battalion was marched into Sussex, and from thence to Ashford in Kent. From Ashford it was moved in the spring of 1808 to Maldon, in Essex, where it received a draft of four hundred men from the second battalion; this detachment had unfortunately contracted the ophthalmia in Hilsea barracks, and, notwithstanding all the precautions that were taken to prevent the contagion spreading, upwards of two hundred men were in a short time afflicted with the disease; nor was it until towards October that the battalion again became quite effective.