On the 28th of December the EIGHTY-EIGHTH sailed from Falmouth for the Peninsula, but encountered, in the Bay of Biscay, a gale of three weeks’ duration, by which the transports on board which it was embarked, were at length forced into Cork, and detained there until the 21st of February following. While at Cork, Colonel Duff, to the great regret both of officers and soldiers, quitted the regiment, in consequence of the recent death of his uncle the Earl of Fife, and the command devolved on Major Vandeleur. [Sidenote: 1809] The original destination of the EIGHTY-EIGHTH was Cadiz, off which city it arrived on the 6th of March, 1809; but the Spanish Government refusing to receive any British troops into the fortress, it was ordered to Lisbon, where it landed on the 13th, and being brigaded with the Eighty-Seventh, was marched, early in April, to Coimbra. About this time, two of its non-commissioned officers, Serjeant-Major Nicholas Torrence, and Quarter-Master Serjeant William Hill, were promoted to commissions in the Portuguese army, of which the Colonel of the EIGHTY-EIGHTH (Lieutenant-General Beresford) was Commander-in-Chief, with the rank of Field Marshal. When the combined British and Portuguese army moved from Lisbon to the north of Portugal to expel Marshal Soult from Oporto, the EIGHTY-EIGHTH was one of the regiments attached to the Portuguese army under Marshal Beresford, destined to act upon the Upper Douro and in the province of Tras os Montes, and intercept the retreat of the French. The march upon Amarante, the passage of the Douro, and the occupation of Oporto, are justly ranked high among the many brilliant achievements of the Duke of Wellington: nevertheless, the very nature of the service in which the EIGHTY-EIGHTH was engaged unquestionably tended to put to severe trial the discipline of every corps employed in it. The rapidity and length of the marches; the very unfavourable state of the weather; the obstacles presented by the nature of the country in the Tras os Montes, where the men were frequently obliged to use torch-light to avoid the risk of being dashed to pieces in the craggy paths they were obliged to traverse; the hospitality of the peasantry, who, totally ignorant of the imperious demands of military duty, were loud in commiserating and anxious to alleviate the hard fate of their deliverers thus compelled to march through their country in such inclement weather, and at such unseasonable hours; all offered temptations to straggling, which it is not at all wonderful that the men in many instances yielded to. The best-regulated army during a campaign, even if carried on under the most favourable circumstances, always becomes more or less relaxed in its discipline; and when it is considered that the wreck of the EIGHTY-EIGHTH regiment, after its capture at Buenos Ayres, was made up by drafts from the second battalion, that a few short months, only, were allowed it to recruit and re-organize before it was again