SWABEY DIARY. 385 
troops who had taken refuge there merely because they were lost and 
isolated, the garrison having been long withdrawn. 
Sth July.—I do not know precisely the date of the occurrence, but 
the 2nd division under General Hill met with a repulse recently in 
taking possession of the Maya Pass in consequence of the 7th division 
not arriving in time to its support; the enemy however left the pass in 
the morning. 
Lord Wellington writing to Lieut.-General Sir Thomas Graham 
on this day gives exactly what happened.—(F.A.w.) 
“My time has been so much occupied by reconnaissances and by 
Sir Rowland Hill’s operations for the last three or four days 
that I have been unable to write to you. The enemy appeared 
particularly anxious.to keep hold of this fine valley of Baztan ; 
and Gazan has disputed every position in it; and it was 
necessary to reconnoitre each of them very closely before it 
was attacked, which in these mountainous countries is not 
very easy. However, we have at last got him ont. He had 
three divisions yesterday in the Puerto de Maya, the last 
position in Spain too; and a very strong one it is. We 
had not quite enough troops up, we manceuvred with two 
British and one Portuguese brigade anda half. If the 7th 
division, which was ordered, had arrived in time, or the sea 
fog had held off for an hour or two longer, we should have 
made a good thing of it. Our loss is about 60 wounded.” 
Wellington’s Despatches, Vol. X, p. 512. 
9th July.—Lord Wellington is daily employed in examining the 
different passes of the Western Pyrenees, with the view of shutting out 
the French. I have so often talked of the insincerity of Spanish 
manners that I scarcely need say that the attention of my friends, in 
whose house I am, begins daily to diminish, and I am now treated as 
an inconvenience. 
10th July.—I had the vanity after being up two or three days to 
think myself capable of going out, my surgeon having no objection, so 
I strolled to see Woodyear, whom I was glad to find much better and 
sitting up. 
11th July.—Went to Woodyear’s to see from his windows the cere- 
mony of proclaiming the “constitution.” A stage that had taken a week 
in erecting, but which by the same number of workmen in England 
would have been completed in one afternoon, was covered with chairs 
and decorated with flowers and evergreens for the reception of the 
Governor and his procession which came at one o’clock. They were 
escorted by two or three of what they called regiments of infantry, all 
originally of the same uniform, but whom want of discipline and 
jealousy of instruction, had reduced to a set of many coloured raga- 
1 This is not quite correct. When the French retired across the Ebro previous to the battle of 
Vitoria, they left a garrison of about 700 men in the castleof Pancorvo, by which they commanded and 
rendered useless to the allies the main road from Burgos to Vitoria. The Conde de la Bisbal 
was therefore directed to seize the town and blockade the castle, with the result that the latter 
capitulated on July Ist.—See Wellington Despatches, Vol, X, p, 503, i 
