On the 14th we reached Villa Mercia. It was so very early when we got into the neighbourhood of this place, a place so wretched that we could scarcely get even a drop of water. The troops halted on the open ground some distance from the village. The vestige of a single plant or tree was not to be seen on any side, and the dry stubble-fields yielded us no means of obtaining the comfort of a fire. Our chances for a breakfast were therefore but slight. After marching for the greater part of a very cold night, we all looked blue enough at daybreak, eyeing wistfully the country round for something to build our hopes upon; but alas! the interminable waste was to us as much a desert as the barren sands of Africa. When the arms were piled the men threw off their packs, and seating themselves thereon, commenced a voyage of discovery in their haversacks, rummaging every hole and corner for sundry fragments, the residue of four days provender. The officers with hollow cheeks and cadaverous aspect, having gone to bed, (or rather to mach,) supperless, and being without the slightest chance of muffins or hot rolls, were ruminating on the evil day on which they went a soldiering. In the midst of this, some of the knowing hands, while prowling about the camp, for a few sticks wherewithal to boil a kettle, beheld an old, crazy and dismantled bullock-cart, (on the retired list) lying quietly on the field. As soon as the prize was seen, a general rush succeeded, and, like a pack of hounds pouncing on an unfortunate fox, they flew at the ill-fated remnant of the waggon, and without waiting to dissect, _secundem artem_, the subject before them, they tore it limb from limb, and the broken fragments were carried off in triumph by the ravenous crew. Soon there arose a thin curling smoke in various quarters, awfully distant from each other, and those lucky favourites of fortune, who got a splinter of the aforesaid vehicle, were quickly gladdened by a flame; meanwhile, the tin, wherein the Congo was infused, hung dangling on a ramrod, suspended by two bayonets stuck cunningly in the earth. The poor wretch, with a visage of at least a span in length, who failed in his attempts to share in the spoil of the waggon, scraped up the stubble, which, damp with heavy dew, baffled all his labour, and he was at last obliged, with his culinary vessel in one hand, and his canister in the other, to wander from right to left, in order to beg a portion of some friendly blaze.