In a few days the plain beneath our camp wore an animated appearance. The Mudhir (governor) of the province came, with a magnificent train, and a great flock of under-officers and servants, and pitched his varied camp at the foot of the mountain. We interchanged visits of politeness, and conversed upon the event. The Mudhir told me at once that the actual thieves would never be discovered, at least never brought to confession, as each one knew that it would cost him his neck. But the second day the sheikhs of Saqâra and Abusir, with a number of suspected persons, were brought up to be judged. Neither confrontation nor examination succeeded in obtaining any decision, as it was expected. The punishment was therefore summarily executed; one after the other they were shut in the stocks, with their faces down and their soles up, and pitifully beaten, often to fainting, with long whips, called kurwatch, the thongs of which are strips of hippopotamus skin. It was in vain that I represented that I really saw no reason for punishing these persons precisely, and I was still more astonished when our reverend old friend the sheîkh of Saqâra, for whose innocence I had pledged my strongest belief, was led down and laid in the dust like all the others. I expressed my surprise to the Mudhir, and protested seriously against it, but received for answer that the punishment could not be spared him, for though we had not been exactly upon his soil, yet we had received our guides from him, who had run away, and until now had not returned. With much difficulty I obtained a shortening of the proceeding, but he was already scarcely sensible, and he had to be carried to the tent, where his feet were bound up. The whole matter ended with an indemnification in money for the worth of the stolen things, which I purposely estimated at a large sum, as every loss in money remains for years in the memory of the Arab, while he forgets his thrashing, or, indeed, exults in it, when he no longer feels it. “_Nezel min e’ semmâ e’ nebût, bárakah min Allah_,” say the Arabs, _i.e._ “Down came the stick from heaven, a blessing of Allah.” Even at the proportioning of the fine, the sum we had asked was so divided that the rich sheikh of Saqâra had to pay a much larger share than he of Abusir, a partiality in which the request of the respected old Turk of Abusir, from the Turkish mudhir, no doubt had its due weight.