After marching about a mile and a half the detachment emerged from the main city into the suburbs, where the streets were no longer continuous lines of houses, but were bordered by gardens and orchards, then the street itself merged into a broad track, along which here and there, on either hand, stood detached buildings, some of them large, square, solidly-built houses, with flat, battlemented roofs, and with reja-protected windows; but more of them were mere huts of mud and wattle, with thatched roofs and no windows, save perhaps a square hole in the wall closed at night-time by a wooden shutter. When there were no houses there the road was bordered by a shallow ditch, on the inside of which, on the top of the mound formed by the earth which had been thrown out of the ditch, was planted an irregular fence of aloes, whose broad, sharp-pointed leaves presented a formidable obstacle in the way of any intruder. These fences enclosed the gardens of the men who furnished the Plaza de Los Perdices with its daily supply of fruit and vegetables, these thatched houses were their dwellings. Some of them were already stirring as the troops passed, and were busy fixing panniers of raw hide upon the backs of long-eared mules, or filling these panniers with such produce as their gardens could produce at that season. The unwonted appearance of troops marching on the road caused them no surprise; they were men who were not in the habit of being astonished at anything. They paused for a moment in their work to look after the troops, observing one to another: "The English! What do they, that they get up so early?" Then straightway resuming their occupations they thought no more of them. About a mile the grey-coated soldiers marched through these fenced gardens, which joined on to one another, or were separated only by an occasional roadway, till they came to a new region of "quintas," which were only gardens such as those they had passed, but on a larger scale, divided one from another by wide open spaces of pasture-land. Here they frequently saw horses picketed, or cows lay chewing the cud, and gazing upon them with soft, sleepy eyes. The road was nothing but a broad, beaten track running between these quintas, cut up with deep ruts made by the wheels of heavy carts, but firm under foot, hardened to the hardness of stone by the frosts of winter. At some of these quintas boys were already driving up cows from the pasture towards rows of white posts standing outside the quinta fences, where other cows were tied, and women were busy milking. In a hollow the troops were halted. At the head of the column had marched the light company of the 71st Highlanders, under the command of its captain, who had two lieutenants with him. As they halted, the commanding officer rode up to the head of the column. "Gordon," said he, to one of the lieutenants, "you have been here before, and know something of the ground. We are close to Perdriel now, I believe."