During this day the rain had held up for eight hours, but after dark it again fell heavily. Beef was served out, without biscuit; our cooking was speedily made, as we toasted it on ramrods. After another wretched night, about two hours before daybreak, the soldiers began to clean their arms, by the light of the fires, to prepare for the coming morning. Day broke, but the enemy made no attempt to molest us, and for two tedious hours we continued without any order to move, owing to a stream, four hundred yards, behind us, which had detained the other division some hours in crossing it. As we moved off, the dead and the dying lay under the trees, (the trunks of many of them in flames,) pale and shivering, with their bloody congealed bandages, imploring us not to leave them in that horrible situation, in the middle of the forest in the depth of winter. However, to attempt to afford them assistance was impossible. Every individual had enough to do to drag himself along, after three days' privation. The stream we had to cross was only a few yards wide, but so deep that the soldiers were forced to cross it by single files over a tree, which had been felled and thrown across; had the enemy been aware of such an obstacle, we should have had a terrible struggle at this point; but the French army had suffered so much during the pursuit that they could no longer follow, and became glad of a halt; and we equally glad to get rid of such disagreeable neighbours. Numerous soldiers from the other divisions of the army, (which retired in three columns,) fell out, and kept up a heavy firing, right and left, in the wood at wild pigs, or any other animal they could see. Many hundreds of these exhausted men fell into the hands of the enemy, and when they arrived at Salamanca, _El Rey Joseph_ gave the English prisoners a _pecéta_ each. During this day's march the weather was fine, but the road was overflowed, and up to the men's knees for many miles. Two hours after dark we drew up on a bare hill, clear of the forest; the atmosphere became frosty, but there was scarcely any wood to be obtained, and we spent another shivering night (without rations), gazing at the starry heavens, and counting the dreary hours. Early on the 19th we moved off. The twentieth Portuguese regiment, eight hundred strong, which had come from the south with Col. Skerret, and had been attached to our division the morning we left Madrid, could only now muster half that number of men in the ranks, owing to the cold and not being accustomed to campaigning; and they were obliged to fall out of the column of march to halt for their stragglers. The light division still continued in wonderfully good order, and reached Rodrigo on that day, and bivouacked a mile from the walls of the town, without suffering scarcely any loss, except from the enemy's balls the day they were engaged.