While we remained in the lines, there was a small, thatched, mud-walled, deserted cottage under the hill near our company's post, which we occasionally used as a shelter from the sun or the rain, and some of our men in prowling about one day discovered two massive silver salvers concealed in the thatch. The captain of the company very properly ordered them to be taken care of, in the hope that their owner would come to claim them, while the soldiers in the mean time continued very eager in their researches in the neighbourhood, in expectation of making further discoveries, in which however they were unsuccessful. After we had altogether abandoned the cottage, a Portuguese gentleman arrived one day and told us that he was the owner of the place, and that he had some plate concealed there which he wished permission to remove. Captain ---- immediately desired the salvers to be given to him, concluding that they were what he had come in search of, but on looking at them he said that they did not belong to him, that what he wished to remove was concealed under the dunghill, and he accordingly proceeded there and dug out about a cart load of gold and silver articles which he carried off, while our unsuccessful searchers stood by, cursing their mutual understandings which had suffered such a prize to slip through their fingers, and many an innocent heap of manure was afterwards torn to pieces in consequence of that morning's lesson. Massena having abandoned his desolated position in the early part of November, the fifteenth of that month saw me seated on my cloth of crimson and gold, taking a look at the French rear guard, which, under Junot, was in position between Cartaxo and El Valle. A cool November breeze whistled through an empty stomach, which the gilded outside was insufficient to satisfy. Our chief of division was red hot to send us over to warm ourselves with the French fires, and had absolutely commenced the movement when the opportune arrival of Lord Wellington put a stop to it; for, as it was afterwards discovered, we should have burnt our fingers.