"To be brief. After a ten miles' ride, we reached Almonacid de Zorita, a small town of New Castile, where we roused the alcalde from his bed. He summoned his alguazils, and they, after an infinite deal of trouble, collected by impress all the cattle in the place, amounting to about twenty mules, and as many bullocks. The alcalde assisted us with ill-concealed reluctance, and told me that he and the alcalde of Mora had that morning transmitted to the commandant at Ciudad Real an account of certain outrages, and lawless impressment of mules, committed by a British detachment, at Mora and La Guardia.'
"'You must mistake, Señor Alcalde,' said I, angrily, for I was drenched to the skin at the time; 'the only plunderers of La Guardia, if I may judge from personal experience, are true Castilians.'
"'The Marquis of Santa Cruz shall judge,' said the alcalde, showing us to the door. 'Adieu, señores.'
"'Good-bye, old gentleman, and bad manners to you,' said Crogan, as we leaped on our horses, and, recrossing the sierra reached the waggons about daybreak: and though sleepless and exhausted, I was but too happy when the new team was traced to them, and the whole were once more on their way towards La Mancha.
"Slowly and wearily we toiled on by the banks of the Algador, and again crossing the mountains, near a lake into which it flows, reached Guadalerza, all but overcome by heat and fatigue. I remember that near the lake (which was literally alive with adders and small snakes) there stood a solitary convent; and as we passed its walls, the fair recluses waved their handkerchiefs from their narrow gratings, with many a cry of 'viva los Inglesos,' so long as we were within hearing. From Guadalerza, fortunately, the inhabitants had not fled, and they answered promptly and readily the piteous cries of our sufferers for water, which was supplied to them in crocks and jars, that were filled and emptied as if to quell a conflagration.
"The village of Fuentelfresno, which overlooks those sands from whence the Guadiana is supposed to spring, was our next halting-place, but its miserable and impoverished inhabitants were totally unable to afford us rations of any kind; and there several of the wounded, whose sabre-cuts or gun-shot wounds, by the jolting of the waggons, had broken out afresh, expired. There were two officers and four soldiers, whom we buried in one hole (alas! I cannot call it a grave), under an old orange-tree, near the Jarama. Finding that it was useless to halt in a place where we were in danger of starving, we went further on, and bivouacked nine miles beyond it. near a little runnel of spring water, on a fine green plain. The soundest sleep that ever closed my eyes was enjoyed there, on that soft grassy sward, beside my horse's heels; but I cannot omit to mention the terror by which it was broken.
"My charger snorted, reared, and tried madly to break away from the peg to which I had picketted him.
"I raised myself on inv elbow, and looked around me. The waggons were all closely drawn up side by side: the escort were sleeping among their piled arms, and, muffled in their great-coats, our four sentinels stood motionless, about three hundred yards distant. The moonlight was clear and beautiful. Suddenly something reared its head close beside me; I shrunk under my blanket, and, lo! a frightful snake, nearly fifteen feet long, passed over the whole bivouac, hissing and gliding; but, fortunately, without biting any one, it disappeared into a little thicket of laurels and underwood which grew near us.
"'Och, this Spain!—snakes, too—divil mend it!' I heard Crogan muttering in his sleep; 'more ov it yet! and I have never had a raal good potato down my throat since I came into it.'
"Next day, the sun-burnt plains of La Mancha lay before us; but ere the intense heat of noon, we reached Fernancaballero, in the partida of Piedrabueno; and there (so exhausted were my soldiers, and so terrible the complaints of the wounded), though my route permitted me to tarry but one night, I was compelled to halt for two additional days, an indulgence which nearly cost me my life. In the early morning, when visiting the quarters of the sick and wounded, to render them any assistance in my power before marching, I became aware that a person was following me through the dark, muddy, and unpaved streets of the mountain Puebla.