ve or better organized
battalion could not be found in the whole army. We were all,
moreover, from our commanding officer down to the youngest
ensign, anxious to gather a few more laurels, even in America;
and we had good reason to believe that those in power were not
indisposed to gratify our inclinations. Under these
circumstances we clung with fondness to the hope that our martial
career had not yet come to a close; and employed the space which
intervened between the eventful 28th of April and the 8th of the
following month, chiefly in forming guesses as to the point of
attack towards which it was likely that we should be turned.

ENCAMPMENT NEAR PASSAGES.

Though there was peace between the French and British nations,
the form of hostilities was so far kept up between the garrison
of Bayonne and the army encamped around it, that it was only by
an especial treaty that the former were allowed to send out
parties for the purpose of collecting forage and provisions from
the adjacent country. The foraging parties, however, being
permitted to proceed in any direction most convenient to
themselves, the supplies of corn and grass, which had heretofore
proved barely sufficient for our own horses and cattle, soon
began to fail, and it was found necessary to move more than one
brigade to a distance from the city. Among others, the brigade of
which my regiment formed a part, received orders on the 7th of
May to fall back on the road towards Passages. These orders we
obeyed on the following morning; and after an agreeable march of
fifteen or sixteen miles, pitched our tents in a thick wood,
about half-way between the village of Bedart and the town of
St. Jean de Luz. In this position we remained for nearly a week,
our expectations of employment on the other side of the Atlantic
becoming daily less and less sanguine, till at length all doubts
on the subject were put an end to by the sudden arrival of a
dispatch, which commanded us to set out with as little delay as
possible towards Bordeaux.

It was on the evening of the 14th that the route was received,
and on the following morning, at daybreak, we commenced our
march. The country through which we moved had nothing in it,
unconnected with past events, calculated in any extraordinary
degree to attract attention. Behind us, indeed, rose the
Pyrenees in all their grandeur, forming, on that side, a noble
boundary to the prospect; and on our left was the sea, a boundary