Later in the day we rode into the village again to water the horses and fill the water-carts. As the well was not yet in full working order the engineers had dug a large shallow hole in the ground, lined with a tarpaulin, and not unlike a swimming bath in appearance. This was filled with water from fanatis brought up by the camels, and connected up by hand-pumps to the canvas troughs erected alongside, by which ingenious means we were enabled to water the horses in comparative comfort. For this blessing we were truly grateful after our recent experiences in the desert. Coming back we met some wretched half-starved Bedouins fleeing into the village for safety. One mournful little cavalcade struck the eye arrestingly as it passed. At the head of the party and mounted on a white donkey rode the handsomest Arab I ever saw in Palestine, with clean-cut features and large, sorrowful eyes. Behind him, also on donkeys, rode his womenfolk, heavily veiled, and his retainers in burnous and flowing robes. Hereabouts the road was strewn with leaves and branches blown from the trees, and the whole made a picture startlingly suggestive of that representing Christ's entry into Jerusalem. It must be remembered, lest this scene be set down as a figment of the imagination, that the people of this land are still the people of the Bible: their dress, their habits, their methods of travelling are precisely as they were two thousand years ago. The husbandman still uses the cumbersome wooden plough of the Old Testament, the women still go with their "chatties" down to the well at sunset, to draw water and gossip with their neighbours, as did Rachel before them, and any day can be seen, tending their flocks, shepherds the exact prototype of those who followed the Wise Men of the East to the cradle of the world. I am not going to suggest that this incident of the fugitive sheikh was instantly linked up with the sacred picture, the process was gradual. There was first a sense of being on familiar ground, of having witnessed the whole scene before somewhere, which was followed by the transition to the Bible stories of childhood's days. Then came the inevitable denouement, and the picture was complete. Similar scenes constantly recurred the farther we advanced into Palestine, and it was impossible that they should leave no impression. We found our orders waiting for us when we arrived back at our halting place and at once hooked in and started again, only to be held up a little way out by the congestion of troops who had marched into the village during the morning. The cactus-hedges bordering the lanes afforded admirable protection from observation by enemy aircraft, some of which were hovering in the neighbourhood.