The Monitu did not accept this usurpation of their rights without a struggle, and the Egyptians who came to work among them had either to purchase their forbearance by a tribute, or to hold themselves always in readiness to repulse the assaults of the Monitu by force of arms.  Zosiri had already taken steps to ensure the safety of the turquoise-seekers at their work; Snofrui was not, therefore, the first Pharaoh who passed that way, but none of his predecessors had left so many traces of his presence as he did in this out-of-the-way corner of the empire.  There may still be seen, on the north-west slope of the Wady Maghara, the bas-relief which one of his lieutenants engraved there in memory of a victory gained over the Monitu.  A Bedouin sheikh fallen on his knees prays for mercy with suppliant gesture, but Pharaoh has already seized him by his long hair, and brandishes above his head a white stone mace to fell him with a single blow.

[Illustration:  163.jpg THE MINING WORKS OF WADY MAGHARA]

     Plan made by Thuillier, from the sketch by Brugscii,
     Wanderung nach den Tiirhis Minen, p. 70.

The workmen, partly recruited from the country itself, partly despatched from the banks of the Nile, dwelt in an entrenched camp upon an isolated peak at the confluence of Wady Genneh and Wady Maghara.  A zigzag pathway on its smoothest slope ends, about seventeen feet below the summit, at the extremity of a small and slightly inclined tableland, upon which are found the ruins of a large village; this is the High Castle—­Hait-Qait of the ancient inscriptions.  Two hundred habitations can still be made out here, some round, some rectangular, constructed of sandstone blocks without mortar, and not larger than the huts of the fellahin:  in former times a flat roof of wicker-work and puddled clay extended over each.  The entrance was not so much a door as a narrow opening, through which a fat man would find it difficult to pass; the interior consisted of a single chamber, except in the case of the chief of the works, whose dwelling contained two.

[Illustration:  164.jpg THE HIGH CASTLE OF THE MINERS—­HAIT-QAIT—­AT THE CONFLUENCE OF WADY GENNEH AND WADY MAGHARA]

     Drawn by Boudier, from the photograph published in the
     Ordnance Survey of the Peninsula of Sinai, Photographs, vol.
     ii. pls. 59, 60.

A rough stone bench from two to two and a half feet high surrounds the plateau on which the village stands; a cheval defrise made of thorny brushwood probably completed the defence, as in the duars of the desert.  The position was very strong and easily defended.  Watchmen scattered over the neighbouring summits kept an outlook over the distant plain and the defiles of the mountains.  Whenever the cries of these sentinels announced the approach of the foe, the workmen immediately deserted the mine and took refuge in their citadel, which a handful of resolute