[27] Haifa is notorious on account of its associations with Mount Carmel.  The Latin Carmelites reached Haifa in A.D. 1170 and St. Simon Stock, from Kent, was their general in A.D. 1245.  They were massacred by the Egyptians in 1291 but regained power in the middle of the Sixteenth Century.

[28] There is only one reference to Acre in the Old Testament (Judges i, 31), and one in the New Testament (Acts xxi, 7), under the name of Ptolemais.  It was taken by the Crusaders in A.D. 1102, and held till 1187, as a port of the Kings of Jerusalem.  After a siege it was re-taken from Saladin in 1191, and held for a century.  It was here that the Knights of St. John, after they had been driven from every other part of Palestine, prolonged for forty-three days their gallant resistance to the Sultan of Egypt and his immense host; 60,000 Christians were on that occasion slain or sold as slaves.  Napoleon besieged Acre in 1799, but was prevented from taking it by the British under Sir William Sidney Smith.  It was bombarded in 1840, by British and Turkish Fleets, when an explosion of a magazine destroyed the town.

CAPTURE OF DAMASCUS.[29]

After another day spent at Haifa, back again the Division went (leaving the “S.R.Y.” as a garrison), along the same road by which they had come, as far as the top of the hill above the river.  Here we branched off to the left through Beit Lahm (a German colony), and Seffurie to Kefr Kenna, four miles north-east of Nazareth on the Tiberias Road, said to be the “Cana of Galilee” where the water was turned into wine[30].  The latter part of the road was very narrow and rocky, being in parts merely a goat-track.  Our animals had no water that day—­it being quite unobtainable in spite of previous advices.

At 02.00 the next morning (September 26th) the Division started for Tiberias[31].  “No. 1” Section going with the advance guard, the remainder of the Squadron following the Deccan Horse.  The 14th Brigade reached the shores of Lake Tiberias[32] (Sea of Galilee) just north of the town at 08.30 and halted until 12.00 to allow the Australian Mounted Division to pass through on their way towards Damascus.  Here, horses were “off-saddled” and watered twice during the halt, the water being quite fresh and clear.  Being upon the shore, which was gently shelving, they were able to walk in and drink to their hearts’ content.  A number of men also took the opportunity to bathe; it was fairly hot, being 680 feet below the level of the sea.

The River Jordan runs right through the lake, and it is interesting to know now that this point was 64 miles (as the crow flies), up the river from the site of the late Squadron camp when it was previously in the Jordan Valley.  It was reported to us that the 4th Division had had tough work in the streets of Tiberias in order to capture it.  They had now gone round the southern shores of the lake and joined forces with the Sherifian Troops, who had been harassing the enemy’s Fourth Army east of the Jordan and were now pursuing them northwards.  Practically the whole of the Turkish Seventh and Eighth Armies, which previously held the line west of the Jordan, had now been accounted for.