"Descending from Mora, we traversed a plain which lies between two sierras that terminate at Porzuna, in La Mancha: and if our progress was slow by day, it was slower still by night. The heat was yet excessive; a thick impalpable dust floated about us; the air was close and still; there was not a breath of wind. Our thirst was intense, and a murmur of satisfaction arose from my mournful cavalcade when the blackened sky, and the croaking of the frogs, announced rain; and when it did come, it came in torrents. Then, raising the covers of the waggons, the wretched patients thrust out their pallid faces and trembling hands to catch the heavy drops. The dusty plain soon became transformed into a sea of mud, and the poor convalescent guard sank above their ankles at every step, while, deeper still, the mules went above their fetlocks.
"Anxious and impatient, accompanied by my orderly, I rode forward a few miles, but failed to discover the said village; the whole district was desolate, and being without a guide, I feared that we had lost the way. On returning I found matters still worse; for, taking advantage of my absence, the villanous Spaniards, by a preconcerted arrangement, had simultaneously cut the traces of their mules and bullocks, and (though my guard shot a few of them in the attempt) had fled, leaving the sick and wounded to die in the wilderness.
"I cannot say whether anger or despair was my prevailing emotion; but to be left thus, with three or four-and-twenty waggons (for their number was now reduced), full of sick and dying men, among the mountains of Toledo, without provisions, and without a medical officer, was not very pleasant. Though the rain was still falling, as it falls only in Spain (like one ceaseless and tremendous shower-bath), Crogan and I departed at a gallop after the runaways, but could only overtake one; and, as he would neither halt nor obey us, we fired at him with our pistols, and, breaking his leg, left him in the same condition he had left so many of our comrades.
"Aware that not a moment should be lost in procuring a fresh team, we turned in the direction of Toledo, and ascended the sierra, half blinded by the rain which lashed in our faces, and, by swelling the streams from the hills, was fast making the valley between them a sheet of water