During the march we passed near the bridges of Sunbilla, Yansi, and Lazaca, which cross to the left bank of the river, where some Spanish sentinels were posted on the cliffs, who called out to us, "_miren ustedes, miren los Franceses_," and on casting our eyes upwards, we observed three of the enemy's _chasseurs à cheval_, looking down on us as if from the clouds. Part of the division had been already detached, for the purpose of keeping a look out up the narrow road to the right leading to the heights of Echalar. Just before we reached the mouth of this contracted defile, a buzz from the head of the column proclaimed the enemy's infantry to be at hand, and the musketry had no sooner commenced, than an officer, who had been amusing himself by the perusal of a volume of _Gil Blas_, hastily placed it under the breast of his grey pelisse: almost at the same instant a musket ball buried itself in the middle of the book, and displaced him from his horse, without inflicting any further injury; it is a curious fact, that the exact pattern of the silk braiding of the pelisse[54] was indented in the leaden bullet. Our front being speedily cleared of the enemy's skirmishers, the firing ceased, and we entered a pleasant valley, within half a mile of Bera, which on this road is the frontier town of Spain, and is situated at an elbow, on the right bank of the Bidassoa: it has a good church with a lofty steeple, and consists of one long straggling street, a quarter of a mile in length, and immediately at the foot of the mountain de Comissari, over which a steep road, three yards broad, crosses the summit, which is called the _puérta de Bera_, and leads N.N.E. to St. Jean de Luz, in France; two other roads, if they may be so designated, branch off right and left from Bera, the first running easterly along the valley, (parallel with a small rivulet which empties itself into the Bidassoa), and passes between the great rock of La Rhune and the opposite mountain of St. Bernard, to St. Barbe and Sarré, into France; at this point the rugged defile is very narrow, and almost causes a complete _break or separation_ in the western Pyrenees: the other road from Bera runs across the Bidassoa, over a narrow stone bridge, four hundred yards from the town, to Salines, thence branching off through gloomy forests and over steep mountains to Oyarzun, Passages, and Saint Sebastian. From Salines there is also a narrow rugged pathway, which traverses N.N.W. by the winding current, on the left bank of the Bidassoa; it is intersected with loose stones, and in many places ascends the steep and difficult acclivities over the naked rock, and finally enters the great road beyond Irun, which leads across the Bidassoa (where the enemy had broken down the bridge) into France, thence passing over the river Nivelle to St. Jean de Luz, and on to Bayonne, a distance of about twenty-four miles from Irun, which is the frontier town of Spain by that route.