l to my taste, and many others of
our officers shared my opinions. It was too much like what we
remembered so bitterly at home, when William's troopers pursued
our fugitives to the hills, burning, destroying, and killing, and,
above all, hunting down the priests. This was the other way, but
was as cruel and barbarous. The poor people had given no offence,
save that they held to their own religion. An Irishman should be
the last to blame another for that, and, seeing they had
successfully opposed the efforts of the French to root them out,
it was much against my will that I marched with my regiment. I
hope that, when it comes to fighting against regular troops, of
whatever nationality, I am ready to do my work; but to carry fire
and sword among a quiet people, in little mountain villages, went
against the grain.

"It seemed to us that it was to be a massacre rather than
fighting, but there we were mistaken. It was the hardest work that
I ever went through. It was impossible in such a country to move
in large bodies, and we were broken up into small parties, which
advanced into the hills, each under its own commander, without any
fixed plans save to destroy every habitation, to capture or kill
the flocks of goats, which afforded the inhabitants their chief
means of subsistence, and to give no quarter wherever they
resisted.

"Even now, I shudder at the thought of the work we had to do;
climbing over pathless hills, wading waist deep through mountain
torrents, clambering along on the face of precipices where a false
step meant death, and always exposed to a dropping fire from
invisible foes, who, when we arrived at the spot from which they
had fired, had vanished and taken up a fresh position, so that the
whole work had to be done over again. Sometimes we were two or
even more days without food, for, as you may imagine, it was
impossible to transport provisions, and we had nothing save what
we carried in our haversacks at starting. We had to sleep on the
soaked ground, in pitiless storms. Many men were carried away and
drowned in crossing the swollen torrents. Our clothes were never
dry. And the worst of it was, after six weeks of such work, we
felt that we were no nearer to the object for which we had been
sent up than we were when we started.

"It was true that we had destroyed many of their little villages,
but as these generally consisted of but a few houses, only rough
buildings that could be rebuilt in a few da