south. Here they halted;
and Richard remained here some days, weighed down with perplexity and
distress, and extremely harassed in mind, being wholly unable to
decide what was best to be done.

From a hill in the neighborhood of Hebron Jerusalem was in sight.
There lay the prize which he had so long been striving to obtain, all
before him, and yet he was utterly powerless to take it. For this he
had been manoeuvring and planning for years. For this he had
exhausted all the resources of his empire, and had put to imminent
hazard all the rights and interests of the crown. For this he had left
his native land, and had brought on, by a voyage of three thousand
miles, all the fleets and armies of his kingdom; and now, with the
prize before him, and all Europe looking on to see him grasp it, his
hand had become powerless, and he must turn back, and go away as he
came.

Richard saw at once that it must be so; for while, on the one hand,
his army was well-nigh exhausted, and was reduced to a state of such
privation and distress as to make it nearly helpless, Saladin was
established in Jerusalem almost impregnably. While the divisions of
Richard's army had been quarreling with each other on the sea-coast,
he had been strengthening the walls and other defenses of the city,
until they were now more formidable than ever. Richard received
information, too, that all the wells and cisterns of water around the
city had been destroyed by the Saracens, so that, if they were to
advance to the walls and commence a siege, they would soon be obliged
to raise it, or perish there with thirst. So great was Richard's
distress of mind under these circumstances, that it is said, when he
was conducted to the hill from which Jerusalem was to be seen, he
could not bear to look at it. He held his shield up before his eyes to
shut out the sight of it, and said that he was not worthy to look upon
the city, since he had shown himself unable to redeem it.

There was a council of war held to consider what it was best to do. It
was a council of perplexity and despair. Nobody could tell what it
was best to do. To go back was disgrace. To go forward was
destruction; and it was impossible for them to remain where they were.

In his desperation Richard conceived of a new plan, that of marching
southward and seizing Cairo. The Saracens derived almost all the
stores of provisions for the use of their armies from Cairo, and
Hebron was on the road to it. The