The 3rd Light Horse Brigade, to which the Western Australians belong, spent the night in the Abana Gorge, a few miles from Damascus, to the west along the Beirut Road. Brigadier-General Wilson was under orders to move at dawn and seize the road leading from the city northward towards Aleppo. It was hoped that a track would be found around the outskirts of the town, but this proved impracticable. The Brigade, therefore, with a troop of scouts leading, and the Western Australians following, came down the Abana Gorge, clearing a track through the shambles of dead Turks and Germans and hundreds of camels and horses, heaped on the road in the fighting of the evening before. It soon became plain to the officer second in command of the Western Australians, who was riding ahead with the scouts, that the only way to the Aleppo road lay through the heart of Damascus. The city had not surrendered, and he did not know how many of the enemy it contained. But he decided on the bold course, and pressed on. As the scouts passed the outskirts of the city, riding a narrow road with the river on one side and a prolonged, mud-built garden wall on the other, there was a sudden burst of Turkish rifle fire. No one was hit, and the officer in command, checking the scouts until the advanced squadron of Western Australians came up, ordered drawn swords, and dashed on at a gallop. Across the river, two or three hundred yards away, were thousands of Turks at the barracks. For a moment, the enemy decision was in the balance. But the sight of the great Australian horses coming at a gallop (the Turks and natives never ceased to marvel at the size of our horses), the flashing swords, and the ring of shoes upon the metal, turned the scale. “The shooting by the Turks,” said one of our officers, “gave way, in a second, to the clapping of hands by the citizens.” [Illustration] [Illustration: MAJOR-GEN. CHAYTOR RECEIVES A DEPUTATION OF ARAB CHIEFS NEAR AMMAN ] [Illustration: JERUSALEM ]