A part of it tried to escape, before being driven into the gorge, by a road leading to the north, but were bombed back again into the shambles. Mad with terror, some of the Turks tried to scramble up the steep hills, others made an attempt to descend into the deep gorge; anywhere to escape from the awful hail of bombs and bullets. For four hours the slaughter continued, and when "Cease fire" was ordered, the road for nine miles was literally a vast charnel-house. Guns, limbers, commissariat-waggons, field-kitchens, every conceivable form of vehicle, including a private barouche, lay heaped together in monstrous confusion; and when night fell ragged, half-starved Bedouins descended upon the stricken valley, stealing from pile to pile of débris in search of loot, nor could the rifles of the guards deter them from the ghoulish task. It took an entire division three weeks to clear the roads and bury the dead.
Isolated columns from the Turkish 7th Army did succeed in reaching the Jordan, but were all killed or captured by the mounted troops left in the valley. Daily the toll of prisoners increased, as hundreds of Turks who had been in hiding in the hills round Samaria and Nablus were driven by hunger to give themselves up to the searching parties. Ras el Ain, which had been a part of our front line, presented an extraordinary spectacle, for most of the prisoners passed through here on their way south to Wilhelma and beyond. For thirty-six hours there was hardly a break in the procession shambling towards the great hill on which stand the ruins of Herod's Castle, where Salome danced for the head of John the Baptist, and where now the prisoners were caged. There was a marked difference between the condition of the Turkish prisoners and that of the Germans: the former were ragged, half-starved, and yellow with privation and fatigue, but all the Germans I saw were sleek, well-clad, and bearing every sign of good living. It was impossible to cage them together, for they fought like cats with each other on every possible occasion, and caused endless trouble to the guards, who had to go amongst them with the bayonet in order to separate them.
[Illustration: THE VALLEY OF CHAOS--BEFORE THE TURKISH RETREAT. [_To face p. 256._]