at the
head of the Libyan columns marched Musawasa with his son Tehenna.

The princely leader was flushed with delight that in his first war he
would have such an experienced enemy as Musawasa.

He overestimated, therefore, the danger of the struggle and redoubled
every caution. To have all chances on his side he had recourse to
stratagem. He sent confidential men to meet the Libyans; he commanded
them to feign that they were fugitives, to enter the enemies' camp and
draw from Musawasa his best forces, the disbanded Libyan soldiers.

"Tell them," said Ramses to his agents, "that I have axes for the
insolent, and compassion for obedience. If in the coming battle they
will throw their weapons down and leave Musawasa, I will receive them
back to the army of his holiness, and command to pay all arrears, as if
they had never left the service."

Patrokles and the other generals saw in this a very prudent measure;
the priests were silent, Mentezufis sent a dispatch to Herhor and next
day received an answer.

The neighborhood of the Soda Lakes was a valley some tens of kilometers
long, enclosed between two lines of hills, extending from the southeast
toward the northwest. The greatest width did not exceed ten kilometers;
there were places narrower, almost ravines.

Throughout the whole length of that valley extended one after another
about ten swampy lakes filled with bitter, brackish water. Wretched
plants and bushes grew there ever coated with sand, ever withering,
plants which no beast would take to its mouth. Along both sides were
sticking up jagged limestone hills, or immense heaps of sand in which a
man might sink deeply.

The white and yellow landscape had a look of dreadful torpor, which was
heightened by the heat, and also by the silence. No bird was ever heard
there, and if any sound was given forth it was from a stone rolling
down along a hillside.

Toward the middle of the valley rose two groups of buildings a few
kilometers from each other; these were a 'fortress on the east, and
glass factories on the west, to which Libyan merchants brought fuel.
Both these places had been deserted because of the conflict. Tehenna's
corps was to occupy both these points, and secure the road to Egypt for
Musawasa's army forces.

The Libyans marched slowly from the town of Glaucus southward, and on
the evening of the fourteenth day of Hator, they were at the entrance
to the valley of the Soda Lakes, feeling sure that they