The versatility of Bonaparte's genius was never more marked than at this time of discouragement. While his enemies figured him and his exhausted troops as vainly seeking to escape from those arid wastes; while Nelson was landing the French prisoners in order to increase his embarrassment about food, Bonaparte and his _savants_ were developing constructive powers of the highest order, which made the army independent of Europe. It was a vast undertaking. Deprived of most of their treasure and many of their mechanical appliances by the loss of the fleet, the _savants_ and engineers had, as it were, to start from the beginning. Some strove to meet the difficulties of food-supply by extending the cultivation of corn and rice, or by the construction of large ovens and bakeries, or of windmills for grinding corn. Others planted vineyards for the future, or sought to appease the ceaseless thirst of the soldiery by the manufacture of a kind of native beer. Foundries and workshops began, though slowly, to supply tools and machines; the earth was rifled of her treasures, natron was wrought, saltpetre works were established, and gunpowder was thereby procured for the army with an energy which recalled the prodigies of activity of 1793. With his usual ardour in the cause of learning, Bonaparte several times a week appeared in the chemical laboratory, or witnessed the experiments performed by Berthollet and Monge. Desirous of giving cohesion to the efforts of his _savants_, and of honouring not only the useful arts but abstruse research, he united these pioneers of science in a society termed the Institute of Egypt. On August 23rd, 1798, it was installed with much ceremony in the palace of one of the Beys, Monge being president and Bonaparte vice-president. The general also enrolled himself in the mathematical section of the institute. Indeed, he sought by all possible means to aid the labours of the _savants_, whose dissertations were now heard in the large hall of the harem that formerly resounded only to the twanging of lutes, weary jests, and idle laughter. The labours of the _savants_ were not confined to Cairo and the Delta. As soon as the victories of Desaix in Upper Egypt opened the middle reaches of the Nile to peaceful research, the treasures of Memphis were revealed to the astonished gaze of western learning. Many of the more portable relics were transferred to Cairo, and thence to Rosetta or Alexandria, in order to grace the museums of Paris. The _savants_ proposed, but sea-power disposed, of these treasures. They are now, with few exceptions, in the British Museum.