The crusading armies now paused for several days,[273] enjoying the repose and comfort which the spot afforded, and which their exhausted troops so much required. The wounds of the soldiers who had suffered in the late battle were thus in some degree healed; and the abundance of provisions the enemy had left behind served to renovate the strength and raise up the hopes and enthusiasm of the Christians. In the mean while, the Turks, who had survived their defeat at Doryloeum, spread themselves in large bands over the country, and, pretending to have totally overcome the Latins, forced themselves into the cities, destroying and wasting every thing in their way.[274] The Christians thus, in their march through Phrygia, had to cross a large tract which had been completely ravaged by the enemy. With their usual improvidence, they had exhausted the provisions they had found in their adversary's camp; and ignorant of the country, they had provided themselves with no water, so that they had to encounter all the heat of the solstitial days of a Phrygian climate, without a drop of liquid to allay their burning thirst. Men and horses fell by thousands in the way;[275] and the women, parched with drought, and dying with fatigue, forgot delicacy, feeling, and even the ties of human nature--rolled prostrate on the ground with the agony of thirst--offered their naked bosoms to the swords of the soldiers, and prayed for death--or threw down their new-born children in the track of the army, and abandoned them to a slow and miserable fate! The most terrible mortality prevailed among the beasts of burden, so that the animals accustomed to bear the baggage of the host having nearly all died by the way, dogs and oxen, and even hogs,[276] are said to have been loaded with the lighter articles of necessity, while an immense quantity of luggage was cast away on the road. Many falcons and dogs--a part of knightly equipage never forgotten--had been brought from Europe to Asia; but the dogs, spreading their nostrils in vain to the hot wind for the least breath of moisture, left the long-accustomed hand that they were wont to love, and straying through the desolate land, died among the mountains; while the clear eye of the noble falcon withered under the fiery sky, which nothing but a vulture could endure; and, after long privation, he dropped from the glove that held him.[277]