A few hours’ march brought them to the summits of the Pyrenees, and afar off was seen the ocean, which they had not beheld for so long. It was the way to their homes, and from a simultaneous feeling, which inspired every man, three hearty cheers awoke the echoes of the mountains; caps and bonnets were tossed into the air,—the bands struck up "Rule Britannia," and the pipers blew till their faces grew purple and black. The brigades halted for a few minutes, and a dead silence succeeded the first outbreak of their joy. Every man’s breast seemed swelling with emotions, which he found it impossible to communicate; but he read in the faces of his comrades the same joy which quickened the pulses of his own heart. The sea,—the same deep-heaving sea which swept around the rocks and shores of their own country, now spread its broad bosom before them; and long and wistfully they gazed on the white sails of the solitary British cruisers, which here and there dotted the dark-blue waters of the Bay of Biscay. The green ridges of the Lower Pyrenees, the fertile plains and wooded vales of France, lay spread at their feet like a brightly-tinted map. Saint Jean de Luz, the famous and opulent Bayonne, and a thousand minor towns and villages were seen from those lofty summits, now trod by British soldiers for the first time. Behind them lay sunny España, through which they had toiled and fought their way, and where many a comrade had found his grave,—but no man looked to the rear. Every eye was turned to the north,—on France, which lay below them. But stern and bloody work was awaiting them, and many a one whose heart then bounded with thoughts of his native home, and with a thousand inexpressible hopes, wishes, and fond anticipations, was doomed to find his last resting-place on these very heights of Maya. That night the troops bivouacked on the mountain side, a league in front of Elizondo. As it was generally his luck after any march which had been particularly long and tiresome, Ronald Stuart had command of an advanced picquet, forming one of the chain thrown out in the direction of Gazan’s division, which had taken up a position lower down the mountains with the determination to dispute every inch of ground that led to _la belle France_,—a resolution which the Marquess of Wellington determined to put to the test next day. Stuart’s orders were to visit his sentries every hour throughout the night, to keep them on the alert; a duty which proved very harassing after so long a march, as it was almost impossible to sleep in the short intervals between the rounds. However, fretting would not have bettered the affair, and rolling himself up in his cloak, he resolved to make himself as comfortable as he possibly could. A huge fire lighted by the soldiers lessened the cold, and counteracted the effects of a heavy wetting dew, which falls amid these mountains at almost every season.