At last, on July 21, they were released from the life, to them after active service, so monotonous and every way so disagreeable; and on that day marching about a league and a half only, bivouacked, and on the next day marched into Portalegre. On the 23rd they proceeded to Castello de Vide, where they occupied several quintas round the town. Thence they marched northward by much the same route by which they had moved to the Alemtejo, passing Niza on the 29th, and on the next day crossing the Tagus at Villa Velha, by a pontoon bridge, and bivouacking in an olive-grove. Thence to Castello Branco on August 1, to Lausão on the 2nd, Bemposta on the 3rd, Mauras on the 4th, whence they moved to the neighbouring heights on the 6th, and continued their march towards the northern frontier of Portugal on the 7th. On the 10th the Battalion crossed the Agueda at the ford of Vado de Carros, and occupied the villages of Martiago with the right wing, and Langella with the left. On the 11th they started, with Lord Wellington, to make a reconnaissance on Ciudad Rodrigo. On their approaching it some hundred infantry with a few field-guns, came out of the town, but did not venture beyond the protection of the guns of the place. The reconnaissance having been effected, the Riflemen returned to their cantonments. During the march from the Alemtejo the men of the Battalion had suffered much from the heat, and many of the marches had to be performed in the evening, or before sunrise, or during the night. On August 21 the four companies of the 3rd Battalion which had been at Barrosa, joined the Light Division, and a fifth company, which, as has been mentioned, was attached to Sir Brent Spencer’s Division at his request, as a Colonel Commandant of the Regiment, also joined, thus forming five companies of the Battalion, under the command of Colonel Barnard. They were placed in Beckwith’s brigade of the Light Division. About the same time another company of the 2nd Battalion, which had embarked at Portsmouth on July 5, and had landed at Lisbon on the 14th, under the command of Captain Hart, also joined the Light Division. Sickness, no doubt contracted in the Alemtejo while encamped on the Caya, still made great ravages among the troops of the Light Division; three officers and many men of the Regiment having died while it occupied these cantonments on the Agueda. At the end of August the Regiment (or at least the 1st Battalion) marched to Villa Rejo, on the 28th to Zamarra, and on the 29th to Atalaya. On that evening George Simmons was sent forward with a company, and a corporal and three men of the German hussars, with orders, by moving through a woody country and by a circuitous route, to strike on the road leading from Salamanca; and then to proceed at his discretion, in order to ascertain, if possible, whether any convoy was on its way to throw provisions into Ciudad Rodrigo. He reconnoitred Tenebrun, and bivouacked for the night in a wood.