To proceed with General Jochmus, I may remark that a letter of his to the Admiral, of the 20th of January[36], clearly shows what little reliance could be placed in the reports that were made to him, of the state of Ibrahim’s army from all quarters. After giving an account of the destruction of 230 camel-loads of grain by the Baron Dumont, at Maan, after Souliman Pacha had provisioned himself, and marched on Suez, with the greatest part of the artillery, women, and children, he states, “The army itself, of which the second column was to sleep at Maan on the 11th, seeing its provisions burnt, had been obliged to countermarch, and is now wandering in the Desert harassed on all sides by Bedouin tribes. Its state seems to be dreadful, and all over the country through which the Baron Dumont came back to Kerek, he saw the bodies of small detachments which had been cut off by the Bedouins.” We look in vain for a confirmation of this in Baron Dumont’s report[37]. The Baron talks of the quantity of grain he destroyed, of the forty-four camels he captured, and forty he found dead, which are included in the eighty-four taken in one night, but not one word of dead bodies destroyed by the Bedouins, or of Ibrahim’s army wandering in the Desert; and so far were they from wandering in the Desert pursued by the Arabs, that on the very day that the magazines at Maan were said to be destroyed, Ibrahim, hearing of the movement on Gaza, crossed the Jordan at Jericho, menaced Jerusalem, and forced Hussein Pacha to return to Abugosh. Having succeeded in this point, he recrossed the Jordan, passed to the south of the Dead Sea, and arrived at Gaza without any person knowing what had in the meantime become of him, as will shortly be seen by Lieut. Loring’s report. In another report to the Admiral, dated from Jerusalem, January 28[38], the General, in giving an account of the passage of the Jordan by the Egyptians, says: “On the 14th a corps was reported to have crossed the Jordan, and bivouacked (near Jericho) at Reyha. Hassan Pacha, encamped at Abugosh, three hours south-west of Jerusalem, marched, towards the evening, on the 15th instant; but the Egyptian division, hearing of his approach, immediately recrossed the Jordan, with a heavy loss in drowned and killed, the waters of that river having risen more than a foot during the incessant rains of the 14th and 15th of January; and the Arabs falling upon the troops during the passage, and in the nearly impracticable passes of the Dead Sea.