The Templars and the Hospitallers, who were well acquaintedwith the country, employed themselves by night in maraudingand foraging expeditions. They frequently started off at midnight, swept the country with their tureopoles or light cavalry, and returned to the camp at morning's dawn with rich prizes of oxen, sheep, and provisions.* In the great plain near Ramleh, when the Templars led the van of the christian army, Saladin made a last grand effort to arrest their progress, which was followed by one of the greatest battles of the age. Geoffrey de Viuisauf, the companion of King Richard on this expedition, gives a lively and enthusiastic description of the appearance of the Moslem array in the great plain around Jaffa and Ramleh. On all sides, far- as the eye could reach, from the sea-shore to the mountains, nought was to be seen but a forest of spears, above which waved banners and standards innumerable. The wild Bedouins.f the children of the desert, mounted on their fleet Arab mares, coursed with the rapidity of the lightning over the vast plain, and darkened the air with clouds of missiles. Furious and unrelenting, of a horrible aspect, with skins blacker than soot, they strove by rapid movement and continuous assaults to penetrate the well-ordered array of the- christian warriors. They advanced to the attack with horrible screams and bellowings, which, with the deafening noise of the trumpets, horns, cymbals, and brazen kettle-drums, magna clamaret fbititer in medio exercitu dicens, ADJOVA sapr/LCjiarjivr RANCTCM ; ad hanc vocem clamabant universi eadem verba repetentes, et manus suas cum Ittcrymis ubeirbnia tendente» in crelum, Dei misericordiam postulantes et adjutorium—Tinimuf, cap. xii. p. 351. • Ibid. cap. xxxii. p. 369. f Bedeieini borridi, fuligine obscuriores, pedites improbissimi, areas gestante» cum pharetria, et ancilia rotunda, gens quidem acerrima et expedita,—Vinisauf, cap. xviiï. p. 355. ROBUBT DB A. Sn,nîi91.