ancient and very excellent allies, the
Portuguese, with a beautiful climate, delicious wines, and very delightful
wives and daughters, were the most infernal rogues and scoundrels ever met
with. 'Make yourself thoroughly acquainted with the leading features of the
natives,' said old Sir Harry to me in a despatch from head-quarters; and,
faith, it was not difficult,--such open, palpable, undisguised rascals
never were heard of. I thought I knew a thing or two myself, when I landed;
but, Lord love you! I was a babe, I was an infant in swaddling clothes,
compared with them; and they humbugged me,--ay, _me!_--till I began to
suspect that I was only walking in my sleep.

"'Why, Monsoon,' said the general, 'they told me you were a sharp fellow,
and yet the people here seem to work round you every day. This will never
do. You must brighten up a little or I shall be obliged to send you back.'

"'General,' said I, 'they used to call me no fool in England; but, somehow,
here--'

"'I understand,' said he; 'you don't know the Portuguese; there's but one
way with them,--strike quickly, and strike home. Never give them time for
roguery,--for if they have a moment's reflection, they'll cheat the devil
himself; but when you see the plot working, come slap down and decide the
thing your own way.'

"Well, now, there never was anything so true as this advice, and for the
eighteen months I acted upon it, I never knew it to fail.

"'I want a thousand measures of wheat.'

"'Senhor Excellenza, the crops have been miserably deficient, and----'

"'Sergeant-major,' I would say, 'these poor people have no corn; it's a
wine country,--let them make up the rations that way.'

"The wheat came in that evening.

"'One hundred and twenty bullocks wanted for the reserve.'

"'The cattle are all up the mountains.'

"'Let the alcalde catch them before night or I'll catch _him_.'

"Lord bless you! I had beef enough to feed the Peninsula. And in this way,
while the forces were eating short allowance and half rations elsewhere,
our brigade were plump as aldermen.

"When we lay in Andalusia this was easy enough. What a country, to be sure!
Such vineyards, such gardens, such delicious valleys, waving with corn and
fat with olives; actually, it seemed a kind of dispensation of Providence
to make war in. There was everything you could desire; and then, the
people, like all your wealthy ones, were so timid, and so easily
frightened, you could get what