s, in the north, towards
the end of August.

The French had advanced and blockaded Almeida, during our absence, but
they retired again on our approach, and we took up a more advanced
position than before, for the blockade of Ciudad Rodrigo.

Our battalion occupied Atalya, a little village at the foot of the
Sierra de Gata, and in front of the River Vadilla. On taking
possession of my quarter, the people showed me an outhouse, which,
they said, I might use as a stable, and I took my horse into it, but,
seeing the floor strewed with what appeared to be a small brown seed,
heaps of which lay in each corner, as if shovelled together in
readiness to take to market, I took up a handful, out of curiosity,
and, truly, they were a curiosity, for I found that they were all
regular fleas, and that they were proceeding to eat both me and my
horse, without the smallest ceremony. I rushed out of the place, and
knocked them down by fistfuls, and never yet could comprehend the
cause of their congregating together in such a place.

This neighbourhood had been so long the theatre of war, and
alternately forced to supply both armies, that the inhabitants, at
length, began to dread starvation themselves, and concealed, for their
private use, all that remained to them; so that, although they were
bountiful in their assurances of good wishes, it was impossible to
extract a loaf of their good bread, of which we were so wildly in want
that we were obliged to conceal patroles on the different roads and
footpaths, for many miles around, to search the peasants passing
between the different villages, giving them an order on the commissary
for whatever we took from them; and we were not too proud to take even
a few potatoes out of an old woman's basket.

On one occasion, when some of us were out shooting, we discovered
about twenty hives of bees, in the face of a glen, concealed among the
gumcestus, and, stopping up the mouth of one them, we carried it home
on our shoulders, bees and all, and continued to levy contributions on
the _depot_ as long as we remained there.

Towards the end of September, the garrison of Ciudad Rodrigo began to
get on such "short commons" that _Marmont_, who had succeeded
_Massena_, in the command of the French army, found it necessary to
assemble the whole of his forces, to enable him to throw provisions
into it.

Lord Wellington was still pursuing his defensive system, and did not
attempt to oppose him; but Marm