"By Wednesday (19th) I had perfect order in the town, and all firing of houses had been stopped, life was comparatively safe, looting nearly stopped. By Friday the 21st, one week after taking charge, all the fires were put out, all the corpses buried, and things were generally ship-shape. I could not have done this unless the admiral had trusted entirely to me, and given me absolute power of life and death, or to flog, or to blow down houses, or to do anything that I thought fit to restore law and order and to put the fires out. I only had to shoot five men by drumhead court-martial sentence, besides flogging a certain number, to effect what I have told you. "I had a clear thoroughfare through every street in the town by Monday (24th), and all _débris_ from fallen houses piled up each side and all dangerous walls pulled down. These things were done by organising large working parties of from 100 to 200 hired Arabs. At first I collected them at the point of the bayonet and made them work, but I paid them a good wage every evening, and the bayonets were unnecessary after the first day, when they found that England would pay well. "I also collected all the fire-engines I could find, bought some, and requisitioned others, got some artificers from the Fleet and got the engines in order, had a bluejacket fire-brigade, and also a working party of Arabs on the same footing as the road brigade. These worked exclusively at the fires, and not at patrolling unless at urgent necessity. Besides these I had a sanitary committee, which buried any bodies we might have missed, burned refuse and remains of loot about the streets, and reburied any bodies which might not have been buried deep enough, besides enforcing cleanliness directly the town began to get a little bit shipshape. There was a corps of native police to work under {194} my patrols, and when I turned all the affairs over, I had 260 of these men. "I disarmed all Europeans found in the streets with revolvers, and by so doing saved many a row in the town, as the class I have mentioned returned in thousands after the bombardment, and they treated the Arabs as if they, the Europeans, had silenced the forts and policed the town. I put many in irons for looting, and for shooting at inoffensive Arabs. "The greatest triumph was the formation of an Egyptian court to try the serious cases I had on hand for life and death and long terms of imprisonment. Not only did tret the court formed to try what cases I chose to bring before it but after sentence of death I insisted on Egyptian authorities making the Egyptian soldiers (the loyal ones) themselves shooting the prisoners whom the court sentenced....