Scotchmen are generally famed for the size of their noses, and I know not whether it is that on service they get too much crammed with snuff and gunpowder, or from what other cause, but certain it is that they do not prove themselves such useful appendages to the countenance there as they do in their own country, in scenting out whatever seemeth good unto the wearer, for I remember one day, while waging war against the snipes on the flooded banks of the Rio Maior, in passing by the rear of a large country house which was occupied by the commander-in-chief of the cavalry, (Sir Stapleton Cotton,) I was quite horrified to find myself all at once amidst the ruins of at least twenty dozen of sheep's heads, unskinned and unsinged, to the utter disgrace of about two thousand highland noses belonging to the forty-second and seventy-ninth regiments, which had, all the while of their accumulation, been lodged within a mile, and not over and above well provided with that national standing dish. I will venture to say, that had such a deposit been made any evening on the North Inch of Perth in the days of their great grandfathers, there would have been an instinctive gathering of all the clans between the Tay and Cairngorum before day-light next morning. CHAP. VII. "Blood and destruction shall be so in use, And dreadful objects so familiar, That mothers shall but smile when they behold Their infants quartered with the hands of war." The month of March, eighteen hundred and eleven, showed the successful workings of Lord Wellington's admirable arrangements. The hitherto victorious French army, which, under their "spoilt child of fortune," had advanced to certain conquest, were now obliged to bundle up their traps and march back again, leaving nearly half their numbers to fatten the land which they had beggared. They had fallen, too, on nameless ground, in sickness and in want, and without a shot, by which their friends and relatives might otherwise have proudly pointed to the graves they filled. Portugal, at that period, presented a picture of sadness and desolation which it is sickening to think of--its churches spoliated, its villages fired, and its towns depopulated. It was no uncommon sight, on entering a cottage, to see in one apartment some individuals of the same family dying of want, some perishing under the brutal treatment of their oppressors, and some (preferring death to dishonour) lying butchered upon their own hearths.