Sir Arthur, after having halted eight days at Placentia, moved on the 17th to Talaquela; on the 18th to Majedas, and on the following day to Casa de Centinela, across vast plains, occasionally covered with forests of cork trees. These quarters of the 19th, as the name indicates, consisted of a single house, which offered such miserable accommodation, that Sir Arthur, as well as the rest of the staff, preferred sleeping in wigwams, made with boughs of trees. On the 20th, while the army pushed on to Oropesa, the heat and the want of water were so great, that the troops suffered exceedingly, and several men sank under exhaustion. Here we became an allied army, forming a junction with the Spaniards, from whom we hoped, however we might doubt, to receive support and assistance. But the first view of the infantry considerably damped our expectations, though we were assured their cavalry, moving across at Arzobispo, were to appearance (for we had not forgotten their conduct at Medellin) the best of the army. On further acquaintance, however, our conclusions respecting even this part of the army were not more favourable than that we had formed of their sister arm the first day we joined them; as they wanted in spirit and conduct, what the foot soldiers required in appointments and organization. The army of Spain, before the breaking out of the Revolution, though not so degraded as that of Portugal, had been long declining. Although the army intended for the coast of Barbary, assembled under Gen. Count O'Reilley, as late as 1788, was in an efficient state, it had greatly altered for the worse within the last twenty years. Instead of keeping pace with the rest of Europe in improvements in the art of war, Spain had considerably retrograded; and while the two last years had shaken to pieces the old establishment, the officers educated under it were incapable of forming a new army. Although the men were the same as those who, three centuries before, had raised the Spanish name to the height of celebrity it so well deserved and so long maintained, they were no longer led by a chivalrous nobility and gentry. The officers taken from these classes in the beginning of the 19th century, evinced in their character the debasing state of the Court and Government.