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cks. Each battalion was led by a staff-officer, who was splendidly, or wretchedly, mounted, as his luck had served him. The company officers carried alpenstocks, and their orderlies had officers' cast foraging-caps on top of their glazed shakoes. I noticed a battalion of Cazadores, distinguished by the emblematic brass horn of chase wrought on their collars, and two companies of Engineers in uniforms entirely blue, with towers on their collars. These latter were robust, sinewy young fellows. After the infantry came a company of the 2nd Regiment of Mountain Artillery with four small pieces, each drawn by a single mule, and behind them a squadron of Mounted Chasseurs, and a long cavalcade of pack-horses and mules. After a deal of exploration a driver was dug up, and after a deal of negotiation he consented to take me to Los Pasages. Thanks to Republican vigilance, but principally it may have been to the nature of the ground, the road thither was clear. We started at six o'clock in the evening, and after a lively spin through sylvan scenery drew up in less than an hour at the outskirts of a village on the edge of a quiet pool, which we had bordered for nigh a mile. No papers had been asked for, on leaving, at the bridge over the Urumea, where a post of volunteers kept guard by an antique and stumpy bronze howitzer, mounted on a siege-carriage, and furnished with the dolphin-handles to be seen on some of the last-century guns in the Tower Arsenal. No papers were asked for either at the Customs' station, some hundred yards farther on; but the Carabineros looked upon me as a lunatic, and significantly sibilated. None were asked for at the approach to the village. Scarcely had I alighted when a fishwife ran out of a cabin and addressed me in Basque. I could not understand her, and motioned her away, when a winsome lassie of some eighteen summers, tripping up the road, came to my aid, and began speaking in French as if she were anticipating my arrival. "Monsieur wants a shallop to go to France?" I was taken aback, but answered, "Yes." "Monsieur will follow me." And she gave me a meaning sign--half a wink, half a monition. I followed, and examined my volunteer guide more attentively. What a prize of a girl! Hair black as night, but with a glossy blackness, was parted on her smooth forehead, and retained behind, after the fashion of the country, by a coloured snood, but two thick Gretchen plaits escaped, and hung down t
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