302 SWABEY DIARY. 
circumstances and with the probability of the army’s moving, in which 
case I could not have stirred, it put me in mind of French prisons, 
Bayonne and all its horrors. 
Sth August.—I employed an interval of comparative health, only to 
wait the coming of the fever to-morrow. 
Ith August.—I lay the greater part of the day in indescribable 
agony from pain in head and eyes, but rallied, and by order of the 
surgeon, rode out in the evening, though scarcely able to sit on my 
horse. 
10th August.—The fever did not return to the charge again to-day, 
and I swallowed oceans of bark to prevent its effects to-morrow, as I 
was already much weakened. 
11th August.—My attack to-day was so much slighter, that I made 
up my mind to go to Zafra to-morrow for change of air. 
[It was previous to the Salamanca retreat in 1812 that owing to the 
extensive sickness which prevailed in Sir Rowland Hill’s division, I was 
detached from my own people to assist the reduced number of officers 
in another troop. Ague degenerating into typhus was the prevailing 
malady. ‘The Spaniards are scarcely ever free from the former. ‘La 
calentura,” which I suppose might mean any fever, was a daily visitor 
in every house large or small, none escaped its visitations, and this 
appears always to be the case and not a peculiarity of the time or 
circumstances. With us, unless when a man was attacked on the march, 
and in that case it often turned to typhus, it was easily cured by Peru- 
vian bark with which the medicine chests were largely supplied. The 
natives seemed to consider it as a component part of their constitutions 
and shivered and burnt alternately with the most laudable resignation, 
and except when we gave it them seldom employed any antidote. Years 
after however when my military days were at an end, I had a footman 
who had been a soldier in the 8rd Dragoon Guards, and who had a recipe 
for ague given him by a Spanish priest. This effectually distanced in 
its effects all the medical skill in the neighbourhood where I lived during 
a prevalence of this lingering complaint, which is very frequent in 
English country parishes, and though not often immediately fatal dis- 
poses the sufferer to dropsy, typhus, and many other serious disorders]. 
12th August.—In the cool of the evening I left Villa Franca, Lefebure 
and Ambrose to cure themselves, and rode over to Zafra, where I had 
previously sent to secure a billet, and accomplished the ride with 
tolerable ease. 
13th August.—My disorder to-day was so slight that I congratulated 
myself on having so soon got rid of a bad business. 
14th August.—Being much strengthened, I rode this evening with 
Captain Maxwell into the mountains, when all on a sudden, in the 
valley between two large sierras, we came to an immense lake, on which 
the moon was shining, the whole forming the finest night scene I had 
ever beheld, I was at a loss to account for such an accumulation 
