Before this last order was fully carried out an unexpected and most welcome diversion occurred. Saladin was now in daily expectation of some troops from Egypt, for whose despatch he had given orders some time before with a warning that they must be specially cautious when they approached the territory occupied by the Franks. These troops waited at Belbeis for the assembling of a great caravan, in company with which they finally set out for Jerusalem. All this was known to Richard through his scouts, who were fully equal in efficiency to those of Saladin; some of them were renegade Arabs[939]; others were Syrian Christians, so well disguised and speaking the “Saracen” tongue so perfectly as to be indistinguishable from real Saracens. Three of these Syrian spies came into the camp—seemingly on Sunday June 21[940]—and bade the king mount and ride with his men, and they would lead him to the great caravan that was coming up from Egypt. Richard, in his joy, asked Hugh of Burgundy and the other Frenchmen to join the expedition, and they did so, on condition of receiving a third part of the spoil. With five hundred knights and men-at-arms the king rode by moonlight to Blanchegarde and thence to Galatia, a town in the plain, half way between Ascalon and Ibelin of the Hospital; there he was within easy reach of both the coast-road and the inland road, and could also procure from Ascalon whatever supplies he needed, whether of fresh horses or provisions.[941] Saladin, as soon as he was informed of these movements, despatched five hundred picked Turkish soldiers under the emir Aslam to meet the force from Egypt and warn it of its danger.[942] He evidently expected that the Egyptians, knowing the coast to be practically in the hands of the Franks, would come by the inner or eastern road which after crossing the Wady Ghuzzeh divided into two branches, one passing over the mountains by Hebron and Bethlehem, the other through the Shephelah across the Wady el Hesy and thence by Beit Djibrin (Ibelin) to the valleys of Elah and Sorek. This latter route, being the easier and shorter, was the one which the Egyptians would naturally take and which Aslam took to meet them. His mission was to reach them, if possible, in the desert, and guide them by the safer though more toilsome and lengthy way over the mountain-range. Riding as only Arabs (and possibly Richard on Fauvel) could ride, he and [Sidenote: _June 22_] his party did meet them, late in the evening, at what the Arabs called “the Waters of Kuweilfeh” and the Franks “the Round Cistern.” This was no doubt a well-known stage on the road from Egypt and Mecca; its site is at the southern foot of the Shephelah, close to the opening from the central fosse into the desert, and it would thus be the first watering-place for their beasts of burden after passing the Wady Ghuzzeh and before entering the hill-country. Aslam was urgent that the ascent to Hebron should