Through here that picturesque Assyrian warrior Sennacherib must have passed when he "came down like a wolf on the fold; and his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold." It is to be hoped that the invasion did not take place in the rainy season or the cohorts would have been sadly bedraggled before they had reached Michmash. It will be remembered by most as the scene of Joshua's passionate exhortation: "Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon; and Thou, Moon, in the Valley of Ajalon," on that day when, having defeated the Amorites with great slaughter, he was fearful lest night should fall before he could turn the defeat into a rout. It must have been a wonderful and uplifting day for the Israelites, after so many years of oppression. Through Beth-Horon, twenty-five centuries later, passed our own Richard Coeur de Lion on his last crusade; when, finding to his bitter mortification that his forces were so depleted by disease and death that he could not go on, he turned his back and refused even to look upon the City he could not save.
After which brief incursion into the past let us return to history in the making, not that the cavalry as a whole troubled themselves greatly about anything so high-falutin'. Their immediate concern was to maintain their precarious foothold in these melancholy hills; and if they worried at all it was over the important question as to whether rations in satisfactory quantities could be brought to them. With complete unanimity they cursed the mist-like rain that shut out the surrounding hills from view; for they, together with the whole army, had bitter reason for mistrusting fog, after Katia and the first battle of Gaza.
Despite increasing pressure from the Turks, now awake to the seriousness of their position, the cavalry held on to their positions and even advanced a little, so affording the necessary protection for the advance of the infantry farther to the south. These were marching on Jerusalem from the British positions at Ludd and Ramleh, which latter place had been Turkish G.H.Q.
From the west to Jerusalem there is but one road which can properly be described as such, but it is one of the most travelled roads in the world, and certainly amongst the most famous. In every age and from all countries thousands of pilgrims landing at Jaffa have trodden this ancient road to the Holy City. The first part of it is indescribably beautiful, leading as it does through some of the orange groves which surround Jaffa. In the springtime, if you turn your horse a mile or two away from the town an incomparable view is spread before your eyes. On every hand stretch the orange groves, great splashes of white and green, the scent from which is almost overpoweringly sweet. Here and there you see the darker green of the olive and the blazing scarlet of the pomegranate blossom, divided into patches by hedges of prickly pear; and scattered about promiscuously are oleanders, cypresses, and the stately sycamores. In the midst of it all lies Jaffa the Beautiful, almost virginal in its whiteness, and beyond, in almost incredible harmony of colour, the purple waters of the Mediterranean.