Next morning we proceeded, accompanied by a hussar, through dreadful
roads, where the poor creatures we bestrode sunk to the belly at every
flounder, until about four p.m., when we met two negroes and found, to
our great distress, that the soldier who was our guide and escort, had
led us out of our way, and that we were in very truth then travelling
towards the town. We therefore hove-about and returned to Palanquillo, a
village that we had passed through that very morning, leaving the hussar
and his horse sticking fast in a slough. We arrived about nightfall,
and as the village was almost entirely deserted, we were driven to take up
our quarters in an old house, that seemed formerly to have been used as a
distillery. Here we found a Spanish lieutenant and several soldiers
quartered, all of them suffering more or less from dysentery; and after
passing a very comfortless night on hard benches, we rose at grey dawn,
with our hands and faces bhstered from musquitto bites, and our hair full
of wood ticks, or garapatos. We again started on our journey to
headquarters, and finally arrived at Torrecilla at two o'clock in the
afternoon. Both the Commander-in-Chief Morillo, and Admiral Enrile, had
that morning proceeded to the works at Boca Chica, so we only found El
Senor Montalvo, the Captain-General of the Province, a little kiln-dried
diminutive Spaniard. Morillo used to call him "uno muneco Creollo," but
withal he was a gentlemanlike man in his manners.
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