at numbers of women, and even children
also; and there they were, seated around fires, roasting their potatoes
in this bivouac fashion, as though they had deserted hearth and home to
follow us.

Such was the avidity to get arms--of which the distribution was
announced to take place here--that several had scaled the wall in their
impatience, and as they were more or less in drink, some disastrous
accidents were momentarily occurring, adding the cries and exclamations
of suffering to the ruder chorus of joy and revelry that went on
unceasingly.

The impression--we soon saw how absurd it was--the impression that
we should do nothing that might hurt the national sensibilities, but
concede all to the exuberant ardour of a bold people, eager to be led
against their enemies, induced us to submit to every imaginable breach
of order and discipline.

'In a day or two, they 'll he like your own men; you 'll not know them
from a battalion of the line. Those fellows will be like a wall under
fire.'

Such and such like were the assurances we were listening to all day,
and it would have been like treason to the cause to have refused them
credence.

Perhaps I might have been longer a believer in this theory, had I not
perceived signs of a deceptive character in these our worthy allies;
many who, to our faces, wore nothing but looks of gratitude and delight,
no sooner mixed with their fellows than their downcast faces and dogged
expression betrayed some inward sense of disappointment.

One very general source of dissatisfaction arose from the discovery,
that we were not prepared to pay our allies! We had simply come to arm
and lead them, to shed our own blood, and pledge our fortunes in their
cause; but we certainly had brought no military chest to bribe their
patriotism, nor stimulate their nationality; and this I soon saw was a
grievous disappointment.

In virtue of this shameful omission on our part, they deemed the
only resource was to be made officers, and thus crowds of uneducated,
semi-civilised vagabonds were every hour assailing us with their claims
to the epaulette. Of the whole number of these, I remember but three who
had ever served at all; two were notorious drunkards, and the third
a confirmed madman, from a scalp wound he had received when fighting
against the Turks. Many, however, boasted high-sounding names, and were,
at least so Kerrigan said, men of the first families in the land.

Our general-in-chief saw