A smooth ball or a well polished sword will slip through one of your transparent gentlemen so gently that be scarcely feels it, and the holes close again of their own accord. But see the smash it makes in one of your turtle or turkey fed ones! the hospital is ruined in finding materials to reduce his inflammations, and it is ten to one if ever he comes to the scratch again. On descending to the river side next morning to trace the effects of the preceding night's combat, we were horrified and disgusted by the sight of a group of at least five hundred donkeys standing there ham-strung. The poor creatures looked us piteously in the face, as much as to say, "Are you not ashamed to call yourselves human beings?" And truly we were ashamed to think that even our enemy could be capable of such refinement in cruelty. I fancy the truth was, they were unable to get them over the river, they had not time to put them to death, and, at the same time, they were resolved that we should not have the benefit of their services. Be that as it may, so disgusted and savage were our soldiers at the sight, that the poor donkeys would have been amply revenged, had fate, at that moment, placed five hundred Frenchmen in our hands, for I am confident that every one of them would have undergone the same operation. The French having withdrawn from our front on the 16th, we crossed the Ciera, at dawn of day, on the 17th; the fords were still so deep, that, as an officer with an empty haversack on my back, it was as much as I could do to flounder across it without swimming. The soldiers ballasted with their knapsacks, and the sixty rounds of ball cartridge were of course in better fording trim. We halted that night in a grove of cork trees, about half a league short of the Alva. Next morning we were again in motion, and found the enemy's rear-guard strongly posted on the opposite bank of that river. The Alva was wide, deep, and rapid, and the French had destroyed the bridge of Murcella, and also the one near Pombeira. Nevertheless, we opened a thundering cannonade on those in our front, while Lord Wellington, having, with extraordinary perseverance, succeeded in throwing three of his divisions over it higher up, threatening their line of retreat--it obliged those opposed to us to retire precipitately, when our staff corps, with wonderful celerity, having contrived to throw a temporary bridge over the river, we passed in pursuit and followed until dark; we did not get another look at them that day, and bivouacked for the night in a grove of pines, on some swampy high lands, by the road side, without baggage, cloaks, or eatables of any kind.