17 OCTOBER 1868, Page 2

Mr. John Routledge, engineer, of Durham, six feet two or

three in height, and of great personal strength, is traffic manager at Cordova. The battle of Alcolea going on, he went out to see it, and seeiug it, saw the wounded necessarily neglected. He could not help the battle, but he could help that incident of it, so for hours he went in and out under the fire, steadying the ambulance corps, bearing the wounded in his arms to the ambulances. He seemed, says the writer who described his achievement, to bear a charmed life. Marshal Serrano, who seems to know a man when he sees him, went up to him, embraced him, and decorated him with his own order, that of Isabella the Catholic, which bauble Routledge quietly put in his pocket, perhaps the most character- istic feat of all he had done that day. Clearly, a hero of the simple, unconscious, best sort, luckier than other heroes in this, that he has found his sacer vates in the modern form of a news- paper correspondent. He will find himself famous on Tyneside, the reward he would most prefer.