ewart, who was shot through the head from a window. He was a gallant
soldier, and deeply lamented. We placed his body in a chest, and
buried it in front of Colonel Beckwith's quarters.

March 31st.--At daylight, this morning, we moved to our right, along
the ridge of mountains, to Guarda: on our arrival there, we saw the
imposing spectacle of the whole of the French army winding through the
valley below, just out of gun-shot.

On taking possession of one of the villages which they had just
evacuated, we found the body of a well-dressed female, whom they had
murdered by a horrible refinement in cruelty. She had been placed upon
her back, alive, in the middle of the street, with the fragment of a
rock upon her breast, which it required four of our men to remove.

April 1st.--We overtook the enemy this afternoon, in position, behind
the Coa, at Sabugal, with their advanced posts on our side of the
river.

I was sent on piquet for the night, and had my sentries within
half-musket shot of theirs: it was wet, dark, and stormy when I went,
about midnight, to visit them, and I was not a little annoyed to find
one missing. Recollecting who he was, a steady old soldier and the
last man in the world to desert his post, I called his name aloud,
when his answering voice, followed by the discharge of a musket,
reached me nearly at the same time, from the direction of one of the
French sentries; and, after some inquiry, I found that in walking his
lonely round, in a brown study, no doubt, he had each turn taken ten
or twelve paces to his front, and only half that number to the rear,
until he had gradually worked himself up to within a few yards of his
adversary; and it would be difficult to say which of the two was most
astonished--the one at hearing a voice, or the other a shot so near,
but all my rhetoric, aided by the testimony of the serjeant and the
other sentries, could not convince the fellow that he was not on the
identical spot on which I had posted him.

April 2d.--We moved this day to the right, nearer to the bridge, and
some shots were exchanged between the piquets.

BATTLE OF SABUGAL,

April 3d, 1811.

Early this morning our division moved still farther to its right, and
our brigade led the way across a ford, which took us up to the middle;
while the balls from the enemy's advanced posts were hissing in the
water around us, we drove in their light troops and commenced a
furious assault upon their main body. Th