We here halt a-day; on the 22nd, about twelve, I arrived at Almeida—that heap of ruins—and turned out, by the authority of the Governor, two Portuguese officers, to get one miserable room as my quarters. Colonel Le Mesurier, the late governor, was too ambitious a man to remain inactive, shut up in Almeida during a campaign. He therefore applied for a brigade in the Portuguese service, and, though he could not obtain it, gave up his government to command a regiment. I met him at the gate on his way to Miranda de Duero to join his division. The new Portuguese governor was just moving, but as he had not yet got into the present government-house he gave us up all the great stable, which was very good, and he was in every respect very civil and willing to do the most for us. In my way here we had no particular adventures. By the aid of the Spaniard in loading we have much less trouble, and I have always ridden on, and got a quarter before the baggage arrived. My only companions were the Paymaster-general, Hunter, and Mr. Whitter, and nine other clerks with him, and the military chest, &c., and two or three commissariat parties. The weather has been uniformly fine, and at times very hot. We have daily been roused at five o’clock, and off at six, but have nevertheless suffered from the heat, at times very much, before we arrived at our station.
On the 23rd we left Almeida and descended to the Coa and passed it by a very picturesque bridge, rendered more so from one stone arch having been blown up, and repaired with wood in a rough style. After a mile of steep ascent, we reached a lofty, rough, level common, in a wild, uncultivated country, like Dartmoor; with the Sierra d’Estrella on one side, still partly tipped with snow, and the ridge of hills and Castello Rodrigo on the other. We passed Valverde,—a complete ruin now—a village without one roof remaining! I was sorry to hear that we had begun the destruction of it, and that the Portuguese soldiers afterwards left very little remaining for the French to do. The next village, Periero, was pleasingly situated, and we then soon got down by a river, and observed Pinhel with its old Moorish tower, fort, and walls, and a bishop’s palace, and a convent adjoining, a league before us, on the brow of a hill. At Pinhel we were all fixed by the Juez de Fores in the bishop’s palace, and had a choice of large empty rooms in this now uninhabited but lately handsome house. It was all tight, and Mr. Hunter having a table by means of baggage, and tubs for seats, we fared very well. The stables are magnificent, good ones for thirty horses, and inferior for sixty horses more.
At Almeida there was no green forage to be had; we bought small bundles of grass at about a shilling each in the grass-market for our animals. At Pinhel we however got an order for green barley from the Juge, twenty-eight pounds each animal for the day, and they all fared so luxuriously that my black gentleman was the next day very troublesome. In the bishop’s palace at Pinhel, the rooms formed a very handsome suite round a square court in the centre; the hangings, &c., all removed, but the ceilings ornamented; the rooms well shaped, with a tolerable garden adjoining; but the house standing exactly like the Castle Inn at Marlborough, by the road side, at the end of the town. The water is very bad, a nuisance from which we are, it seems, to suffer much throughout the summer in Spain. Last year our men were at times obliged to hold their noses when they drank. At the convent adjoining the palace, which has been much damaged but not destroyed, one or two monks still remained, and I met one as I wandered over the building. He was very civil. The palace is now appropriated as barracks for officers or troops as they pass. The bishop lives at another, at Santa Euphemie, a league beyond Pinhel.
The castle is like all the Moorish castles I have seen here, with the square smooth towers of well-cut hard stone, as sharp now almost as when first built. In the castle lying about are four curious specimens of old cannon, two ribbed, made of beaten iron bars and braced together; one of them appeared to be hollow at both ends, and solid in the middle. The other two a sort of mortar, something in the shape of a very old-fashioned, clumsy earthenware jug, with a sort of handle to raise and fix it for use.
At the convent was a small aqueduct of stone pillars across the garden, to conduct a little stream of water to the monks’ habitations; the stream was so small in the pipe that you could scarcely see it run at all, but it was good, and ran constantly all the year, which, as the only good water was a mile off in the river, was very valuable.
On the 24th, our party, consisting of the ten paymasters, three commissaries, and myself, with about fifteen dragoons, and thirty or forty horses, and about thirty or forty baggage animals, assembled at five in the morning in the palace-court and marched onwards.
In less than a league we passed a very pretty village, called, I believe, Valbom, and in another short league came to Euphemia, another village, with rather a large but imperfect house where the bishop resides now; and I believe he was there sitting in his shady colonnade. In a short time we descended again and crossed the Lamego; here we all dismounted, and let the animals graze on the banks, whilst we got some bread and cheese. Half a league further on we turned up out of our road to Cotimos, our destination for the night. It was a bad village, but with a few houses formerly good and still tight. Mr. Hunter, Mr. Whitter, and I, were in a fidalgo’s house, and tolerably comfortable, though there was only an old woman there, but we had chairs and tables. We made a great cup with the country wine, brandy, lemons, &c., and were very well off for a dinner by the purchase of a leveret, eggs and bacon, and mutton broth.
On the 25th left Cotimos; and about a league beyond we came to a much better village, with two or three very good houses, of imposing appearance. This was directly in our road, and would have been a better division of the distance. After another league of excellent road we passed Marialva, half a league on our left, a village, with another Moorish castle. After another half league we came to the entrance of a long winding descent of a mile and a half, which brought us into a pretty vale, with another Moorish castle on the hill on our left; and there we again ate and the animals grazed in the meadows near a little stream. Thence we had a league and a half of excessively steep hill to ascend until we got on the high level where stands Villa Nova de Foscoa; this ascent at near one o’clock was tremendously hot work, and very difficult for the baggage.
We here began to get into the army train. About twenty hospital waggons were encamped on the hill near the town, and two troops of the waggon train; and near them were about eighty ox-cars with bales of cloth done up in a sort of sacks to fill with straw for hospital beds, &c. We here got good quarters and tolerable fare.
On the 26th, leaving Villa Nova, we began immediately to descend a winding road to the Douro; this was very fine, one of the best things I had seen here.