were in many respects better off than the troops, who were compelled to march through ravines which were often mountain torrents in this rainy season; and as they did not carry tents, that they might move with greater rapidity, and were often cut off from all communication with the base of supplies for days together by the rain filling the roads, at best only bad mule-paths, they suffered prodigiously without fighting or even the encouragement of the sack of villages. The Egyptians, clad only in linen which their climate required, perished by cold and wet in hundreds; pneumonia became an endemic in the army; and, to add to the misery, the beasts of burden perished under the hardships, and lined the paths with their corpses. Mustapha was as merciless a commander as enemy, and, though the army was suffering extreme misery, he kept a vigilant watch for his opportunity, and when, after two weeks of fatiguing outpost duty, waiting in hunger, rain, snow, and frost, the Hellenes who guarded the difficult pass of St. Irene were frozen and starved into negligence, he made a dash, one foggy morning, surprised the post, and, taking possession of the heights crowning the ravine, his army defiled leisurely over into the valleys of Selinos. The Greeks moved over to the pass of Krustogherako, which admits to the plain of Omalos from the Selinos side, and the Pasha, believing a defence ready, encamped in the still undevastated valleys, and passed some days in burning and ravaging, destroying vineyards and mulberry-trees wherever they could be reached. The olive-trees, as the reliance of the future income of the island, were mostly spared.