Taking up fresh ground for the night, we descended in the morning the precipitous banks of the river Agueda, leading to the remote village of Martiago, nearly at the base of the Sierra de Gata. On the night we entered it, a pack of famished wolves devoured a donkey, and tore the hind quarters of a horse away. The poor animal was found in the morning, having crawled from his ferocious pursuers into the middle of the village for refuge, in that miserable condition. Ciudad Rodrigo was to be reconnoitred. As convoys of stores and provisions were expected from Salamanca, through the great forest, of four days' march, between those places; and as Don Julien Sanches, with his Guerillas, hovered about ready to cut off all small parties, the French were under the necessity, with incalculable inconvenience, to assemble their army, stretched over a great extent of country, to keep the inhabitants under control, to protect their hospitals, levy contributions, and to make perpetual countermarches in order to keep open their line of communication. On the 11th of August, before daylight, our division was bending its course over ravines, and almost impassable pathways, to show front during a reconnoissance made by Lord Wellington, who usually wore in the field, at this period, a small low-crowned cocked hat, a blue pelisse coat, and a Hussar sash. The sun blazed forth as usual, (for not a drop of rain had fallen since I had put my foot into the country), and biscuit and rum were served out to refresh the exhausted soldiers; a humble refection which no one would think of grudging to those who had been under arms for ten hours, under a burning sun, and crowning the highest hills without a bush to shelter them, or a drop of water to refresh their parched lips. With my rum in one hand, making a shallow appearance at the bottom of a soldier's tin, and my mouldy biscuit in the other, I beheld an officer approach me, in the act of drawing from his bosom an old ragged black silk neck-handkerchief worn out in the service, and now converted into a pocket-handkerchief. He fumbled it over for a whole corner to apply his nose to; and during this operation, his eyes were fixed on my tin. After a variety of hems, coughings, and such like indications, he took courage to beg that I would permit him to dip his dry biscuit into my shallow allowance of rum, to moisten his lips: his request being granted, and thanks returned for the given relief, he told me that, in the hurry to grasp his share, he had unfortunately upset it on the ground, and had the additional mortification to see it dry up in an instant. We were spread out rank entire within sight of the garrison, for the governor to suppose our force stronger than it really was, so that he might inform the Duke of Ragusa, and oblige him to bring up and deploy his whole army, for the protection of his intended convoy.