But no sooner had the escort commenced its return to the army, than these men, between one and two thousand in number, turned also, and made a straight path for their feet to the fortress of Jaffa, laughing at the simplicity of their outwitted foe. But Napoleon was not a man to be laughed at. This merriment soon died away in fearful wailings. Here they joined the marshaled hosts of Achmet the Butcher. The bloody pacha armed them anew, and placed them in his foremost ranks, again to pour a shower of bullets upon the little band headed by Napoleon. El Arish is in Egypt, eighteen miles from the granite pillars which mark the confines of Asia and Africa. Napoleon now continued his march through a dry, barren, and thirsty land. After having traversed a dreary desert of an hundred and fifty miles, the whole aspect of the country began rapidly to change. The soldiers were delighted to see the wreaths of vapor gathering in the hitherto glowing and cloudless skies. Green and flowery valleys, groves of olive-trees, and wood-covered hills, rose, like a vision of enchantment, before the eye, so long weary of gazing upon shifting sands and barren rocks. Napoleon often alluded to his passage across the desert, remarking that the scene was ever peculiarly gratifying to his mind. “I never passed the desert,” said he, “without experiencing very powerful emotions. It was the image of immensity to my thoughts. It displayed no limits. It had neither beginning nor end. It was an ocean for the foot of man.” As they approached the mountains of Syria, clouds began to darken the sky, and when a few drops of rain descended, a phenomenon which they had not witnessed for many months, the joy of the soldiers was exuberant. A murmur of delight ran through the army, and a curious spectacle was presented, as, with shouts of joy and peals of laughter, the soldiers, in a body, threw back their heads and opened their mouths, to catch the grateful drops upon their dry and thirsty lips.