volume one

HISTOET OF THE CEITSADES. 211
They learned tliat a Genoese fleet liad entered the port of
Jaffa, laden with provisions and ammunition of all sorts.
This news spread the 2^reatest joy through the Christian
army, and a body of three hundred men, commanded by
Haymond Pelet, set out from the camp to meet the convoy,
which Heaven appeared to have sent the Crusaders in their
misery. This detachment, after having beaten and dispersed
the Saracens they met on their passage, entered the city of
Jaffa, which, being abandoned by its inhabitants, was occupied
by the Genoese. On their arrival, the Crusaders learnt
that the Christian fleet had been surprised and burnt by
that of the infidels, but they had had time to get out the
pro^dsions and a great quantity of instruments for the con-
struction of machines of war. All they had been able to
save was transported to the camp of the Christians. This
convoy arrived under the walls of Jerusalem, followed by a
great number of Genoese engineers and carpenters, whose
presence greatly revived the emulation and courage of the
army.
As they still had not sufiicient wood for the construction
of the machines, a Syrian conducted the duke of jN^ormandy
and the count of Flanders to a moiuitain situated at a distance
of thirty miles from Jerusalem, between the Valley of
Samaria and the Yalley of Sechem. There the Christians
found the forest of which Tasso speaks in the " Jerusalem
Delivered."* The trees of this forest were neither protected
from the axe of the Crusaders by the enchantments of
Ismen nor the arms of the Saracens. Oxen shod with iron
transported them in triumph before Jerusalem.
None of the leaders, except Raymond of Thoulouse, had
* Maimbourg does not seem to credit the existence of this forest, and
says that it is an invention of Tasso's. He might have read in William
of Tyre this sentence, which is not at all equivocal :—Casu afFuit quidam
fidelis indigena natione Syrus, qui in valles quasdam secretiores, sex aut
septem ab urbe distantes milliaribus, quosdam de principibus direxit, ubi
arbores, etsi non ad conceptum opus aptas penitus, tamen ad aliquem
modum proceras invenerunt plures. Raoul de Caen .is much more
positive and explicit than William of Tyre ; this is the way in which he
expresses himself :— Lucus erat in montibus et montes ad Hyerusalem
remoti ei ; quae modo Neapolis, olim Sebasta, ante Sychar ddctus est,
propriores, adhuc ignota nostratibus via, nunc Celebris et ferme peregre
nantium unica.
—
Vol. I.— 11
Had. Cad. cap. 121.