Note 232 — BATTLES OF THE PYRENEES.

The peninsular sieges were always remarkable for displays of personal intrepidity and adventure. On the 21st, in carrying a parallel across the isthmus, the pipe of a ruined aqueduct was accidentally laid bare. It opened on a long drain, four feet in length, and three feet wide. “Through this dangerous opening Lieutenant Reid of the engineers, a young and zealous officer, crept even to the counterscarp of the horn-work, and finding the passage there closed by a door, returned without an accident. Thirty barrels of powder were placed in this drain and eight feet was stopped with sand-bags, thus forming a globe of compression designed to blow, as through a tube, so much rubbish over the counterscarp as might fill the narrow ditch of the horn-work.”—Napier.