HEAD, not the arm of a commander in chief, which is most wanted.  The Moors at le point du jour, advanced upon the Spaniards behind a formidable masked and moving battery of camels:  the Spaniards, believing them, by a faint light, to be cavalry, expended a great part of their strength, spirits, and ammunition, upon those harmless animals; and it was not till this curtain was removed that the dreadful carnage began, in which they lost about nine thousand men.  There seems to have been some strange mismanagement; it seems probable that there was no very good understanding between the marine and the land officers.  The fleet were many days before the town, and then landed just where the Moors expected they would land.  There is nothing so difficult, so dangerous, nor so liable to miscarriage, as the war of invading:  our troops experienced it at St. Cas; and they either have, or will experience it in America.  The wild negroes in Jamaica, to whom Gov.  Trelawney wisely gave, what they contended for, (LIBERTY) were not above fifteen hundred fit to bear arms.  I was in several skirmishes with them, and second in command under Mr. Adair’s brother, a valiant young man who died afterwards in the field, who made peace with them; yet I will venture to affirm, that though five hundred disciplined troops would have subdued them in an open country, the united force of France and England could not have extirpated them from their fast holds in the mountains.  Did not a Baker battle and defeat two Marshals of France in the Cevennes?  And is it probable, that all the fleets and armies of Great-Britain can conquer America?—­England may as well attempt moving that Continent on this side the Atlantic.

LETTER XX.

MONTSERRAT.

I never left any place with more secret satisfaction than I did Barcelona; exclusive of the entertainment I was prepared to expect, by visiting this holy mountain; nor have I been disappointed; but on the contrary, found it, in every respect, infinitely superior to the various accounts I had heard of it;—­to give a perfect description of it is impossible;—­to do that it would require some of those attributes which the Divine Power by whose almighty handy it was raised, is endowed with.  It is called Montserrat, or Mount-Scie,[C] by the Catalonians, words which signify a cut or sawed mountain; and so called from its singular and extraordinary form; for it is so broken, so divided, and so crowned with an infinite number of spiring cones, or PINE heads, that it has the appearance, at distant view, to be the work of man; but upon a nearer approach, to be evidently raised by HIM alone, to whom nothing is impossible.  It looks, indeed, like the first rude sketch of GOD’s work; but the design is great, and the execution such, that it compels all men who approach it, to lift up their hands and eyes to heaven, and to say,—­Oh GOD!—­HOW WONDERFUL ARE ALL THY WORKS!