[10] The Portuguese greeting each other, embrace; a practice certainly strange to a Briton, and recollecting the effluvia of garlic, is horribly offensive.
[11] Messrs. Smith and Co. opened a Warehouse of English goods, where an Officer might suit himself (paying rather dearly) with every article of wearing apparel, and furniture for the animals, &c.
[12] The scarcity of forage rendered it necessary to curtail the quantity of animals allowed for the use of the army. This fell somewhat hard on Subaltern Officers, who were obliged so to contract their baggage as to deprive themselves of many articles actually necessary to their convenience. That something to wear—something to sleep on—something to eat—and something to cook with—were really necessary for existence; and only one miserable animal was allowed to carry what was so essential for two Subaltern Officers; but it was unfortunately the case.
[13] Senhor Cavigole, as well as many others, Misters and Senhors, kept shops replete with stores of all sorts, which they sold at a very high price, but with which officers knew they must be supplied; for the hungry French had deprived the Portuguese of that little they possessed; and it did happen, and not unfrequently, that divisions had been so scantily supplied with rations, that even a private soldier has been known to give a Dollar for one biscuit, and glad to satisfy his hunger at that enormous rate.
[14] The Juis de Fero is the Magistrate. The soldiers contracted the appellation to Jewish.
[15] The Subaltern Officers, in the Portuguese service, were taken from very humble situations, and of course are not treated by their countrymen with the distinction and respect which British Officers claim; consequently, where Quarters or Billets are disposed according to rank, the Portuguese Alfares, or Ensigns, are thrust into any wretched hovel, and, from the ignorance of the country magistrates, the British Subaltern Officers were not unfrequently treated with as little ceremony: many of them were billeted in the most wretched, filthy, miserable dwellings, which among a race of people so excessively nasty in themselves, rendered the officers particularly uncomfortable.
[16] Immediately in the vicinity of Lisbon, a person may contrive at the inns, or rather wine houses, to be somewhat better accommodated than at a Subaltern’s billet.
[17] No disrespect is intended, but until one can ‘make a Silk Purse of a Sow’s ear,’ we must be content to submit to the ‘insolence of Office.’
THE MILITARY ADVENTURES
OF
JOHNNY NEWCOME
PART II