During our stay in the trenches, just below a mortar battery, the enemy hardly fired a shot from the fortress, in the walls of which were two breaches eighty yards asunder. The principal and wide-mouthed breach had crumbled into a vast mound of sand, rubbish, and broken masonry. A breach is indeed an awful mound of dilapidation to look on, or rather a heap of disagreeable rubbish, particles of which sparkle brightly in the sun beams, while the whole seems to the amateur easy of ascent, but the wary veteran knows it to be a deceitful slope, re-entrenched from behind, and most probably cut off from all communication with the interior of the town. Well may it be called "the deadly breach:" all fighting is bad enough, but when the valiant soldier sees insurmountable obstacles before him, and finds all his efforts unavailing, and death jostling him on every side, his foot, perhaps, planted on the body of an expiring comrade, whose bleeding mouth is filled with dust, and whose trampled uniform at last becomes identified with the rubbish, and the human form no longer distinguishable; and every instant the heap of the slain accumulating, without any possibility of carrying the place,—then, indeed, comes the "tug of war;" for, as a distinguished officer very justly observed, "A breach may be made the strongest part of a fortification, since every combustible, and power of defence, are brought to a known focus." Having remained in the trenches a considerable time, we made for the small town of Renteria, where we put up, with two convalescent officers of our own corps, until the next day. On the 31st the morning broke hazy. Meanwhile before starting for St. Sebastian, we were introduced to Lieutenant Folliet, a young officer of our regiment, who had just come from England for the first time; he expressed much regret at not being able to witness the assault, as he very properly considered it incorrect to leave his detachment, which was ordered to march that morning for Bera. This circumstance I mention, owing to the premature death of this officer.