re. It is absolutely
impossible to reconcile certain things which have happened with the
ordinary currents of life or knowledge.

"We stayed around the Valley of the Sorcerer, till we had copied
roughly all the drawings and writings on the walls, ceiling and floor.
We took with us the Stele of lapis lazuli, whose graven record was
coloured with vermilion pigment. We took the sarcophagus and the
mummy; the stone chest with the alabaster jars; the tables of
bloodstone and alabaster and onyx and carnelian; and the ivory pillow
whose arch rested on 'buckles', round each of which was twisted an
uraeus wrought in gold. We took all the articles which lay in the
Chapel, and the Mummy Pit; the wooden boats with crews and the ushaptiu
figures, and the symbolic amulets.

"When coming away we took down the ladders, and at a distance buried
them in the sand under a cliff, which we noted so that if necessary we
might find them again. Then with our heavy baggage, we set out on our
laborious journey back to the Nile. It was no easy task, I tell you, to
bring the case with that great sarcophagus over the desert. We had a
rough cart and sufficient men to draw it; but the progress seemed
terribly slow, for we were anxious to get our treasures into a place of
safety. The night was an anxious time with us, for we feared attack
from some marauding band. But more still we feared some of those with
us. They were, after all, but predatory, unscrupulous men; and we had
with us a considerable bulk of precious things. They, or at least the
dangerous ones amongst them, did not know why it was so precious; they
took it for granted that it was material treasure of some kind that we
carried. We had taken the mummy from the sarcophagus, and packed it
for safety of travel in a separate case. During the first night two
attempts were made to steal things from the cart; and two men were
found dead in the morning.

"On the second night there came on a violent storm, one of those
terrible simooms of the desert which makes one feel his helplessness.
We were overwhelmed with drifting sand. Some of our Bedouins had fled
before the storm, hoping to find shelter; the rest of us, wrapped in
our bournous, endured with what patience we could. In the morning,
when the storm had passed, we recovered from under the piles of sand
what we could of our impedimenta. We found the case in which the mummy
had been packed all broken, but the mummy itself could now