itely worse for mounted troops. The ground was as steep, but the
hillsides were rougher, the wadis narrower, the patches of open flat
fewer than in the districts where infantry operated. So bad indeed was
the country that horses were an encumbrance, and most of them were
returned to the plain. After a time horse artillery could proceed no
farther, and the only guns the yeomanry had with them were those of
a section of the Hong Kong and Singapore mountain battery, manned by
Sikhs, superb fellows whose service in the Egyptian deserts and in
Palestine was worthy of a martial race. But their little guns were
outranged by the Turkish artillery, and though they were often right
up with the mounted men they could not get near the enemy batteries.
The supply of the division in the nooks and crannies where there was
not so much as a goat-path was a desperate problem, and could not have
been solved without the aid of many hundreds of pack-donkeys which
dumped their loads of supplies and ammunition on the hillsides,
leaving it to be carried forward by hand. The division were fighting
almost continually for a fortnight. They got farther forward than
the infantry and met the full force of an opposition which, if not
stronger than that about Nebi Samwil, was extremely violent, and they
came back to a line which could be supplied with less difficulty
when it was apparent that the Turks were not going to accept the
opportunity General Allenby gave them to withdraw their army from
Jerusalem. The Division's most bitter struggle was about the
Beth-horons, on the very scene where Joshua, on a lengthened day,
threw the Canaanites off the Shephelah.

The Yeomanry Mounted Division received orders on the afternoon of
November 17 to move across Ajalon into the foothills and to press
forward straight on Bireh as rapidly as possible. Their trials they
began immediately. One regiment of the 8th Brigade occupied Annabeh,
and a regiment of the 22nd Brigade got within a couple of miles of
Nalin, where a well-concealed body of the enemy held it up. Soon the
report came in that the country was impassable for wheels. By
the afternoon of the next day the 8th Brigade were at Beit ur el
Foka--Beth-horon the Upper--a height where fig trees and pomegranates
flourish. Eastwards the country falls away and there are several
ragged narrow valleys between some tree-topped ridges till the eye
meets a sheikh's tomb on the Zeitun ridge, standing midway between
Foka