The narrow and dirty streets of Saint Jean de Luz presented a gloomy aspect, being filled with muleteers, cars loaded with biscuit-bags, bullocks, rum-casks, ammunition, idlers, and all the disagreeable incumbrances attached to the rear of an army. As I passed along the high road, I felt exceedingly surprised at the numerous delapidated houses, and empty chateaux, with the orchards and all the fruit trees cut down and converted into _abattis_, which had been done by the French army; but every article that had been left by them in good order, the followers of our army had ransacked. How often do the soldiers of armies bear the odium of enormities and plunderings, committed most frequently by the non-combatant wolves in the shape of men, whose crimes are of such long standing, and so frequently executed (under the cloak of night, or under the mask of hypocrisy), that at last no atrocity is too heinous for so cowardly a banditti to commit. They devour the rations on their way to the hungry army: they steal the officers' horses: they extort exorbitant prices for small articles, which they have stolen from the peaceful inhabitants: they strip the deserted and expiring wounded on the field of battle, and would willingly sell their bodies, could they find purchasers. Having jogged along some miles, amongst this horde of scattered ruffians, I came to the narrow road turning off to the left, which leads across the mountains to the town of Bera; and towards evening I reached, with difficulty, the summit of the contracted pass, narrowed by the drifted, and frozen snow. Here I stopped for a few minutes, (notwithstanding the piercing coldness of the frosty air) to contemplate the town of Bera, and the scattered _quintas_ embosomed in the valley, now wrapped in a _death-like stillness_, and covered, as well as the surrounding mountains, with snow. The brittle branches of the trees were stiffened, fringed, and sparkling with icicles. A few short months had produced a great change! When last I had been at this spot, the foliage was tinted with an autumnal hue, and red lines of soldiers, were formed there, their silken and embroidered ensigns waving, and their bright arms gleaming in the rays of the sun, the craggy heights bristled with bayonets, the drums beating, the merry bugle horns echoing throughout the winding vallies: every eminence was crowned with curling smoke, the vivid firing of small arms, or the occasional flash of the cannon, reverberating amid the forests in hollow caves, broken chasms, and fissures of the granite rock,—producing sounds afar off, like the rumbling of distant thunder,—and altogether giving an inconceivable life, and animation to the scenery.