In this way ended the most trying day's march I ever remember. On the following morning, soon after daylight, we filed across the bridge of Yanzi, held by our pickets, and detached a small force to guard the road towards Echalar, until the troops came up from the direction of San Estevan, which had hung on the enemy's rear for the then three previous days. Continuing our march, we once more debouched by the defile opposite Bera, where the French sentinels were still posted, as if rooted to the rocks on which they were stationed the day we had taken our departure. As soon as the second brigade came up, we again ascended the heights of Santa Barbara, where we found a French corporal, with a broken leg, his head resting on a hairy knapsack, and supported in the arms of a comrade, who generously remained behind to protect the life of his friend from the _cuchillo_ of the Spaniards. As soon as he had delivered him to the care of the English soldiers, he embraced the corporal, saying, "_Au revoir, bon camarade Anglais_," and, throwing his musket over his shoulder, with the butt-end _en l'air_, he descended the mountain to rejoin the French army on the opposite range of heights. Of course, no one offered to molest this _simple soldat_, who easily effected his escape. As our picquets could not enter the valley until our right was cleared, and the enemy pushed from the mountain of Echalar, as soon as another division attacked those heights, the 1st rifles moved on and clambered the mountain of St. Bernard, supported by five companies of our regiment. The soldiers had been for two days without any sustenance, and were so weak that they could hardly stand; however, an excellent commissary had managed to overtake us, and hastily served out half-a-pound of biscuit to each individual, which the soldiery devoured while in the act of priming and loading as they moved on to the attack. The summit of the mountain was wrapped in a dense fog: an invisible firing commenced, and it was impossible to ascertain which party was getting the best of the fight; the combatants were literally contending in the clouds. When half-way up the side of the mountain, we found a soldier of the rifles lying on his face, and bleeding so copiously that his havresack was dyed in blood: we turned him over, and, being somewhat recovered before he was carried off, he told us, in broken monosyllables, that three Frenchmen had mistaken him for a Portuguese, laid hold of him, thrust a bayonet through his thigh, smashed the stock of his rifle, and then pushed him from off the ledge of the precipice under which we discovered him. The second French light infantry were dislodged, before twilight, from the top of this mountain; but the sparkling flashes of small-arms continued after dark to wreath, with a crown of fire, the summits of the various rocks about Echalar.