The rolling upland was brown and bare, scorched for weeks; the harvest long gathered, and all grass for forage lacking. Across its sweep rose a little town of tents, deplorable with use, torn, patched, and dirty; at long cords stood tethered the lean horses, their heads patiently drooping in the heat, and here and there a gap where one of them had fallen and would not rise again. Beyond the camp a dusty, winding track, very wide, just marked by shallow ruts, led away to the horizon and to the crest against the northern sky, whence could be seen, very far off to the westward, the Levantine Sea. Along that faint, broad line ominous wreckage was studded at intervals too close--carts broken down, glistening white bones, and little heaps of refuse which hid the dead. Of the millions that had marched out from Europe three years before to the rescuing of Christ’s grave, a handful were here, still breaking against the long, low wall of the city. Of twenty that had left the pleasant fields at home, in Picardy or in Touraine, from the Garonne, from the cool flats of Vendée, but one had lived or had persevered to see Jerusalem. And now for all these days the last effort had still been quite unavailing. But it was Friday, the day upon which Christ had died; it was noon, the hour of His Crucifixion. In the camp, which looked southward towards the low wall of the city, the serfs were now painfully bearing water up from the stagnant pools below, or were attending the fires for the cooking of meat, against the hour when, once again, as for so many days, the armed men should come back at evening sullen and once again defeated; from that camp, I say, the serfs could see, all along the wall, the assault proceeding. Beyond, within the city itself, glaring in the intense light, was the low, whitewashed dome, the Sepulchre, and Golgotha was just before. It was by groups that the desperate attempt was made, as it had been made day after day during that intolerable heat of the Eastern summer. One could see little figures running with the short scaling ladders, bucklers lifted in a tortoise to shield the bearers; the ladders rapidly put against the wall; men swarming up, now one group just getting a foothold, but soon thrust back again; bodies falling, heavy in their armour, to the ground; the ladders here and there along the half-mile of front broken or thrust outward, and whole lines of men that had mounted them crashing again to earth. While underneath the wall, cowering close in the dead ground, free from arrows above, were other groups that fiercely picked the ground with their steel, and that thrust into the gaps faggots to which they would set fire. The smoke rose, blackening the stones, but none crumbled, and there was no breach.