other building which was in a state to afford them temporary shelter, and thus the infection was carried to every part of Zaragoza. The average of daily deaths from this cause was at this time not less than three hundred and fifty; men stretched upon straw, in helpless misery lay breathing their last, and with their dying breath spreading the mortal taint of their own disease, who, if they had fallen in action, would have died with the exultation of martyrs. Their sole comfort was the sense of having performed their duty religiously to the uttermost ... all other alleviations were wanting; neither medicines nor necessary food were to be procured, nor needful attendance ... for the ministers of charity themselves became victims of the disease. All that the most compassionate had now to bestow was a little water in which rice had been boiled, and a winding-sheet. The nuns, driven from their convents, knew not where to take refuge, nor where to find shelter for their dying sisters. The Church of the Pillar was crowded with poor creatures, who, despairing of life, hoped now for nothing more than to die in the presence of the tutelary saint. The clergy were employed night and day in administering the sacraments to the dying, till they themselves sunk under the common calamity. The slightest wound produced gangrene and death in bodies so prepared for dissolution by distress of mind, agitation, want of proper aliment and of sleep. For there was now no respite neither by day nor night for this devoted city; even the natural order of light and darkness was destroyed in Zaragoza: by day it was involved in a red sulphureous atmosphere of smoke and dust, which hid the face of heaven; by night the fire of cannon and mortars, and the flames of burning houses, kept it in a state of horrible illumination. The cemeteries could no longer afford room for the dead; huge pits were dug to receive them in the streets and in the courts of the public buildings, till hands were wanting for the labour; they were laid before the churches, ♦SEBASTIAN HERNANDEZ, P. 17. CAVALLERO, P. 108.♦ heaped upon one another, and covered with sheets; and that no spectacle of horror might be wanting, it happened not unfrequently that these piles of mortality were struck by a shell, and the shattered bodies scattered in all directions. ♦FIRST TALK OF SURRENDER IN THE CITY.♦