“The enemy’s column above-mentioned proved to be the shattered remains of the corps, called by Mehemet Ali ‘The Guards,’ amounting to from 4000 to 5000 men, and two cavalry regiments, with a battery of artillery, forming the rear-guard of the army, under the personal command of Ibrahim Pacha. The artillery, and one of the regiments, had remained at some distance on the left bank of the river, and the movement was evidently a desperate attempt to march by any way on Gaza or El Arish. “The forlorn situation of this corps,” adds the General, “will be seen from the two inclosed reports of Mehemed Rechid Pacha, Chief of the Staff, and of Riza Pacha, commanding the cavalry[39]. I do not estimate the loss of this army so great as the latter; but certainly, after comparing all the reports, it amounts to 1,000 or more men, and eight pieces of artillery, which latter, although with the column at Es-Salt, were unquestionably not at Kerek on the 19th instant, whither Ibrahim had retired after continual skirmishes with the Arabs. The Governor of Jerusalem had sent his son, Hadgi Hafiz, to ascertain whether the artillery had been buried in the desert mountain or not. “Such was the isolated position of this last corps of the Egyptian army, that its Commander-in-Chief had lost all means of communication with his remaining forces, and that, although Hamid Bey and the Commissioners from Egypt were from the 19th to the 23rd at El-Chalil, trying by all means to establish a communication with Ibrahim either by the north or south of the Dead Sea, it proved a vain attempt, notwithstanding that, during the same days, the above column under the Pacha was at Kerek, surrounded by the Arabs of the country, who had been reinforced by the tribes of Beni Sackr and Beni Hennedy, arrived from the depths of the Desert in consequence of the orders sent them from Jerusalem on the 8th of January, through Baron Dumont. “The distance from El-Mezereib to Kerek is, at the utmost, five days’ march. Ibrahim Pasha left the former place on the 6th or 7th of January, and after fifteen days was still at Kerek, having continually marched and counter-marched in the desert mountains in search of food, or from having been stopped in the mountain defiles. According to the statement of the son of the Chieftain of Abugosh, a Captain in the Guards, who deserted on the 21st instant from Kerek, and had been with the column ever since it quitted Damascus and El-Mezerib, Ibrahim marched from the latter place to Bilka, thence back north to Es-Salt, again south to Kerek and back to Jericho; obliged to recross the Jordan, he for a second time returned to Kerek, having lost his guns, ammunition, and stores, during the continued and very harassing attacks, day and night, of the Arab bands intent on plunder.