The appearance, too, of the troop was vexatious in the extreme. Our noble horses, yesterday morning so sleek and spirited, now stood with drooping heads and rough staring coats, plainly indicating the mischief they had sustained in being taken from a hot hold, plunged into cold water, and then exposed for more than seven hours on an open beach to such a tempest of wind and rain as that we experienced last night. Here was a practical illustration of the folly of grooming and pampering military horses, destined as they are to such exposures and privations. As for our men, they looked jaded, their clothes all soiled with mud and wet, the sabres rusty, and the bear-skins of their helmets flattened down by the rain. Still, however, they displayed the same spirit and alacrity as that which has always been a characteristic of the horse-artillery, more particularly of G troop. Whilst thus awaiting our rations, we had ample leisure to look about us, and amuse ourselves with the varied groups collected on the quay and the novelty of the scene. To be sure, the principal of these were English, and mostly soldiers too. Some were drinking at the doors of the cabarets, knapsacks on their backs, and prepared to start; others already in movement, escorting baggage; near us a battery of field-artillery parked, with their horses picketed in a long line along the rear of the carriages, quietly eating their corn out of hair nosebags, which ever and anon they would toss in the air, the better to get at the few remaining grains of their food; gunners and drivers lying about ready to fall in or mount at the shortest notice. Here they had passed the night, and the remains of their fires were still glowing in some rudely-constructed fireplaces of loose stones or bricks. Such objects were familiar to our eyes, but they were intermixed with others which were not. These were the Flemish peasantry, with their heavy countenances, walking by the side of their long, narrow waggons, and guiding their noble horses with admirable dexterity through the throng by long reins of small (very small) cord passing through holes in the clumsy highly-ornamental collars or haims. Long blue smock-frocks, decorated with embroidery in coloured worsted about the breast and shoulders; their skulls ensconced in night-caps, red or white; many with long thick queues--and all in clumsy wooden shoes. Women, with hard weather-beaten features, in long-eared caps, enormous gold pendants in their ears, a small cross on the breast, suspended from the scraggy neck by a strip of black velvet, thick petticoats, giving great swell to the hip, and from their shortness exhibiting a pair of stout understanders cased in coarse blue stockings and terminating in heavy _sabots_, enriched about the instep by a rabbit’s skin clumped about in all directions. From time to time a patrol of the gendarmerie, in plain blue uniforms, with large white grenades on the