A circumstance happened here which caused a great sensation, particularly among the courtiers. The last messengers who had been sent from Kúkawa with despatches for the commander-in-chief, as I have observed, had been destroyed by the pagans; and it was on this day, and in this place, that, while all the cottages were being pillaged and ransacked, three of the letters of which those messengers had been the bearers, were found in the pocket of a shirt which had been hid in a clay jar. This was evidently the shirt of the messenger himself; and the blood with which it had been stained had been washed out without taking the letters out of the pocket. Devoid as the expedition was of feats of valour and interest, the greatest importance was attached to this little incident. [Sidenote: Sunday, January 11th.] When we left this place our friends just barely escaped punishment for their barbarous proceeding of burning the villages in which we had encamped as soon as we left them; for the conflagration spread before we had gained the open country, and a most horrible crushing took place among the burning huts. Had there been any wind, great part of the army might have been severely scorched. The country which we passed to-day was intersected by numerous watercourses; and we had to cross and recross them several times. Here we passed a place where the poor natives, in the consciousness of their weakness, seemed to have been aroused to new and unwonted energy for building a large fortification, but had been obliged to leave it half finished. Our march was extremely short, and scarcely extended to three miles, when we encamped in a village which seemed to have been ransacked at a former period. It lay straggling over a wide extent of ground, in separate groups of cottages, which were surrounded by stubble-fields shaded by karáge-trees of a richness and exuberance which I had not seen before, and surpassing even those fine trees of the same species which I have described near the village Kadé.