The mode of refreshing themselves by washing was as primitive as inconvenient, but the trying nature of the service led them to find contentment in the roughest resources. Full dressed, they often plunged into the lakes to scrape and wash away the accumulations of days from their persons and clothes; and on emerging from the waters, bearing their dripping suits on their backs, they ran about to prevent colds or rheumatic seizures, while the sun steamed off the moisture from their threadbare garments. Corporal Auger in these wanderings was the chief dependent. Uncompromising, he was straightforward in his duties; enterprising, he feared nothing. On most occasions he was sent ahead of the party to pace the distance, to find the track through regions of country covered with rank grass more than fourteen feet high, and to discover fords to assist the progress of the wayfarers and thus prevent depressing and harassing detours or returns. The moral courage of that man must indeed have been great, who was the first to penetrate a shrouded and unbroken stretch of solitude, unaware of the dangers in which his every step might suddenly have involved him. The expedition had now penetrated two rivers beyond the Glenelg and Prince Regent, and then turned towards Hanover Bay. On 1st April they started, encountering difficulties of a character similar to those already borne with such cheerfulness and fortitude. Seven days of their journey found private Mustard crippled from falling into a crevice in the rock. Here the Captain, though suffering himself from the wound in his hip, yielded his horse for Mustard’s convenience. On the 15th April, the party reached Hanover Bay, having lost nearly all their live stock and fifteen of their ponies. A few more days were occupied in collecting the stores and shipping them, when the expedition sailed for the Isle of France and arrived on the 17th May. The three sappers were landed in a very sickly and emaciated state, and during their stay at the Mauritius were under medical treatment in hospital. On the 27th January, nineteen non-commissioned officers and privates of the detachment serving with the naval force under the command of Lord John Hay at San Sebastian, were present with General O’Donnell’s army in an attack on the village of Orio, and burnt and sank several flat-bottomed boats under the fire of musketry from the opposite side of the river. On the following day, at the request of the Spanish general, the same sappers were despatched to Usurvil to intrench and fortify a large garden at the outskirts of the village. The work was instantly commenced; but when the party was about to destroy the bridge which had been partially broken, General O’Donnell changed his intention and the sappers returned to San Sebastian. Shortly after, the detachment marched with the marine battalion to Oyarzun to cover the operations of General O’Donnell at Bera.