In the next paragraph he writes (remember this is to his Commander-in-Chief, who disapproved of carrying on hostilities), “Under such circumstances I considered it a most positive duty on my part to defeat the intention of the Egyptian commander, and oblige him to quit Damascus, and follow the route of the Desert; for if a Convention had actually been signed while Ibrahim Pacha remained at Damascus, the military question remained undecided, and the complete conquest of Syria by the allied arms could be denied on the ground of our inability of driving a much superior force from its capital; while, if the Egyptian army made forcibly its way through Palestine to El Arish, its losses and sufferings would be small, the country being rich in every resource, and large government stores existing still at Safed, Tiberias, Ramla, and Gaza.” Now what does this mean? that neither General Jochmus nor Lord Ponsonby, under whose orders it appears, by General Michell’s letter, he was acting[31], cared one straw about conventions or submission, but were determined, if they could, to destroy as many human beings as possible to give éclat to themselves, and please the Sultan or his ministers. After describing what his plans were, the General writes, “It was at this time, and it remains still, my firm conviction[30], that victory would have crowned the Sultan’s arms in a few hours, and that the whole of Ibrahim’s army would have been annihilated, or obliged to surrender; the only force of his still in some state of organization being his cavalry, and they would have been of no use in the rocky grounds of D’Jenin.” Here the General reckoned without his host, for there was no necessity for Ibrahim passing by D’Jenin at all. He might have kept through the extensive plains of Esdraelon, until he arrived at the defiles of Kakoun between Mount Carmel and the Naplouse range, which he must have traversed to gain the sea shore; at this point he might have been attacked advantageously. But it appears that Ibrahim had no intention of taking that route; his apparent hesitation at El Mezereib for three days was probably, as General Jochmus says, to reconnoitre the Jordan, but he had another object in view, and which it will be seen he executed with great skill. By General Jochmus’s account he appears to have arrived at Remtha on the 7th or 8th of January, 1841; and on the 9th a foraging party was repulsed near Es-Salt. “The Egyptian army,” says the General, “fairly launched into the Desert[32], has not since been authentically heard of. When last seen, between El Mezereib and Kalat Mefrek, its infantry was reduced to 15,000 disorderly men; its artillery, though still numerous, was utterly disorganized, principally by desertion.”... We shall shortly see where this wandering, disorganized army next makes its appearance.