were clogged with mud and hampered the already dragging feet.

It was _three days_ before the Amman plain was reached! The cavalry and the
"Cameliers," advancing from the south, were obliged to travel over tracks
which would have given a mountain goat the horrors, across wadis and
nullahs so steep that the horses had to be let down by ropes and hauled up
the other side, while the "Cameliers" had to build their roads as they went
along, a camel being rather an inconvenient beast on which to scale the
slippery sides of a cliff. So, slithering, scrambling, and fighting all the
way, they came at last to Amman, like the infantry, almost too spent for
further exertions. With never a pause for rest, however, the combined
forces on March 28th made an attack on the Turkish positions, having little
artillery support--two batteries of R.H.A. had, I think, succeeded in
getting their guns through the mud--and already weakened by their terrible
privations.

[Illustration: IN THE JORDAN VALLEY--WADI AUJA. [_To face p. 240._]

For three days the battle raged, wave after wave of infantry staggering
forward undaunted, hardly knowing their direction except that it was
towards the enemy, while the cavalry made repeated efforts to storm the
great hill defending the town and the "Cameliers" operated in the centre.
But the odds were too great: not only did the Turks possess all the
advantage of ground, for their positions could only be approached across a
plain swept from end to end by rifle, machine-gun and artillery fire, but
from the Judaean hills reinforcements poured into Amman to aid in its
defence and to cut off if possible the whole of the raiding force.

It was this latter contingency as well as the utter futility of persevering
in the assault, that made a retirement imperative, and on the third night
of the battle the exhausted men began their march back to the Jordan,
picking up on their way the garrisons left at Shunet Nimrin and Es Salt,
together with some hundreds of prisoners. A large proportion of the
Christian inhabitants of the latter place who feared, with good reason,
ill-treatment by the Turks, also joined the column with such meagre
belongings as they could hurriedly snatch together. This influx of extra
mouths to feed strained the already overburdened resources to the utmost,
but the refugees were well looked after both on the retreat and afterwards
in Jerusalem, and most of the children were brought along by the mount