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The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Khedive's Country, by George Manville Fenn
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
Title: The Khedive's Country
Author: George Manville Fenn
Illustrator: Dittrich of Cairo
Release Date: November 8, 2010 [EBook #34245]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE KHEDIVE'S COUNTRY ***
Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England
The Khedive's Country, by George Manville Fenn.
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
THE KHEDIVE'S COUNTRY, BY GEORGE MANVILLE FENN.
CHAPTER ONE.
Man's oldest pursuit was undoubtedly the tilling of the soil. He may in
his earliest beginnings have combined therewith a certain amount of
hunting while he was waiting for his crops to grow, and was forced into
seeking wild fruits and turning up and experimenting on the various
forms of root, learning, too, doubtless with plenty of bitter
punishment, to distinguish between the good and nutritious and the
poisonous and bad.
As a matter of course, a certain amount of fighting would ensue. Wild
animals would be encountered, or fellow savages would resent his
intrusion upon lands where the acorns were most plentiful, or some tasty
form of fungus grew. But whether from natural bent or necessity, as
well as from his beginnings recorded in the ancient Book, he was a
gardener, and the natural outcome of gardening was, as ideas expanded,
his becoming a farmer.
The world has gone rolling on, and many changes have taken place, but
these pursuits remain unaltered. The love of a garden seems to be
inborn; and though probably there are children who have never longed to
have one of their own, they are rarities, for of whichever sex they be,
the love of this form of nature still remains.
There are those who garden or farm for pleasure, and there are those, of
course, who, either on a large or small scale, cultivate the soil for
profit, while the grades between are innumerable. But here in England,
towards the end of such a season as we have had--one that may be surely
termed a record--one is tempted to say, Where does the pleasure or the
profit come in?
Certainly during the present period, or cycle, or whatever it may be
termed, the English climate is deteriorating. Joined to that assertion
is the patent fact that the produce of the garden and farm has largely
gone down in price through the cheapness of the foreign imports thrown
upon the market, and the man with small or large capital who looks
forward to making a modest living out of the land, without any dreams of
fortune, may well pause before proceeding to invest his bawbees, and ask
himself, Where shall I go?
Thousands have debated this question for generations, with the result
that the Antipodes have been turned into Anglo-Saxon farms; Van Diemen's
Land has become another England, with its meadows, hedgerows, and
orchards; New Zealand, the habitat of tree-fern and pine, has been
transformed. Even the very surface has changed, and the land that in
the past hardly boasted a four-footed animal is now rich in its cattle;
while Australia, the dry and shadowless, the country of downs, has been
made alive with flocks, its produce mainly tallow and wool till modern
enterprise and chemistry rendered it possible for the frozen mutton to
reach England untainted after its long voyage across the tropics to our
homes.
To keep to the temperate or cold regions, the name of Canada or the
great North-West springs up as does the corn which fills our granaries;
while the more enterprising cultivators of the soil, who have had souls
above the ordinary plodding of the farmer's life--the fancy tillers, so
to speak--with the tendency towards gardening, produced our sugar from
the West Indies and British Guiana, and tobacco and cotton from the
Southern States, long ere the Stars and Stripes waved overhead; while,
to journey eastward, the gardens have flourished in India and Ceylon
with indigo, spices, and coffee; and later on, wherever suitable slopes
and terraces were found, the Briton has planted the attractive
glossy-leaved tea shrub, until the trade with China for its fragrant
popular produce has waned.
There are plenty of lands of promise for the cultivator, unfortunately
too often speculative and burdened by doubt. They are frequently
handicapped by distance, extremes of climate, and unsuitability to the
British constitution. As in the past, too, imagination often plays its
part, and the would-be emigrant hankers after something new, in spite of
the cloud of possible failure that may hover on his horizon.
There is, of course, a great attraction in the unknown, and untried
novelty is always tempting. But, on the other side, there is the old
and safe, the cultivation of a land which in the past has been
world-famed for its never-failing produce, its mighty granaries, and its
vast fertility, that can be traced back for thousands of years, whose
soil, far from becoming exhausted, is ever being renewed, and which at
the present time is undergoing a transformation that will make its
produce manifold.
Of course, the country which contains these qualities is the familiar
old land of Egypt, the dominion of the Khedive, which, in spite of its
wondrous fertility, has had little attraction for the earnest cultivator
of the earth. It has been the granary of the world for ages; but its
cultivation has been left to its own people, who have gone on with their
old-time barbaric tillage, leaving Nature, in her lavish bounteousness,
to do the rest.
In every way wonderful changes are coming over Egypt, where for
countless ages the policy of the people seemed to be devoted entirely,
as far as the vegetable world was concerned, to the growth of food, or
such fibrous plants as proved their suitability for the manufacture of
the light clothing they required. Any attempt to permanently beautify
the country by taking advantage of its fertility, and commencing the
planting to any great extent of that which was so lacking in the shape
of trees, was left in abeyance till the coming into power of the great
ancestor of the present Khedive, Mehemet Ali. This thinker, of broad
intellect, made some beginnings in this direction, and later on Ismail
Pacha gave a great impetus thereto by enlisting the services of a clever
French gardener, who, fully awakened at once to the possibilities of
climate and land, and with ideas running very much in favour of
landscape gardening, began to introduce and encourage the growth of
shade trees, a complete novelty in a country where the ideas of the
people seem to tend towards placing their dwellings in the full glare of
the sun.
Gardens began to spring up, trees were planted in suitable places, and
the start having been once fairly made, the love of imitation led to the
establishment of a taste or fashion, and planting has now gone on to
such an extent that there are those who are ready to assert that while
the face of Egypt is becoming changed, the presence of the
rapidly-growing and increasing trees is having its effect, through the
attraction and formation of clouds, upon the meteorology of the country.
If this continues, as it may, to a vast extent, the fertility of Egypt
will no longer be confined to the narrow strips on either side of the
Nile, but its deserts may become physical features of the past.
The idea of those in olden times was to pile up huge erections and to
let what came spontaneously grow as was its wont. Now the enlightenment
of the new rulers and the leavening of Western civilisation are working
wonders. That to which Ismail Pacha gave such a fillip is being
fostered and advanced by the present Khedive, and, the ball being well
set rolling, his people are finding out that nearly everything that
loves moisture and sunshine will grow prodigiously. It takes time, of
course, but many of the beautiful shade trees that have been planted
have in forty years reached a height of eighty feet, and become rich in
their heavy foliage. The varieties of the eucalyptus, not always the
most beautiful of trees from their greyish leafage and want of shadow,
are still a wonderful addition to a dry and thirsty land. Considering
their original habitat in Australia, it was a foregone conclusion that
they would do well here, and they have proved to be most rapid of
growth.
Then there is the magnificent Flamboyer des Indes, and scores of other
beautiful children of Nature, which only required care and fostering in
their tender years to prove their liking for their new home. Endless
are the trees that, once given a start, leave behind their scrubby,
starved appearance, and become in maturity well able to care for
themselves and beautify the prospect on every hand.
Acacias, with their perfumed blossoms; the deep green shady sycamore,
that good old favourite like the plane of the Levant; the feathery
tamarisk, and scores of ornamental trees, flourish well; while,
combining the ornamental with the useful, there is the fine,
slow-growing old mulberry, with its rich juicy fruit, and its
suggestions of the soft straw-coloured or golden yellow rustling silk;
for if ever there was a country favoured by Nature, in its dryness and
absence of rain, for the prosperity of the caterpillar of the silkworm
moth, it should be Egypt, where enterprise and a sensible use of capital
ought to leave Asia and Turkey in Europe behind.
Leaving trees and turning to flowers, gardens in Egypt can be made, and
are made, perfect paradises in the meaning of old Gerard and Parkinson;
for the country is a very rosery, where the modern decorative sorts
bloom well in company with the more highly scented old-fashioned kinds
largely cultivated for the distillation of that wonderfully persistent
essential oil, the otto or attar of roses.
Here the lover of a garden and of exotics can dispense with conservatory
or the protection of glass, and, giving attention to moisture and shade,
make his garden flush ruddily with the poinsettia, and may also find
endless pleasure in the cultivation of some of the more beautiful
varieties of the orchid family, which here in England demand the
assistance of a stove.
Perhaps the most attractive time for the visitor from England, who has
thoughts of settling in this country, to see it at its best is when the
Nile is rising to its height, bringing down from Equatorial regions its
full flow of riches and the means of supplying the cultivator with that
which will reward him for his labours beneath the torrid sun.
At this time the crops are approaching maturity; the vast fields of
maize have been passing through the various stages of green, waving,
flag-like leaf, and hidden immature cob, with its beautiful, delicate
tassel, prelude of the golden amber or black treasure that is to come
and gladden the eye of the spectator in every direction. The grassy
millet, or _dourra_, is equally beautiful in its wavy-wind-swept tracts;
the cotton crops are gathering strength prior to the swelling and
bursting of the silky boll; and the majestic sugar-cane towers up in its
rapid progress, till the whole country is smiling in preparation for the
gladsome laughter of the harvest that is to come, for it has been a busy
time. The fellaheen, in their thousands, have been occupied in that
wonderful irrigation which has been the careful distribution through
meandering canal, straight-cut dyke, and endless little rill, of the
lurid thick water of the Nile, laden with its rich plant-sustaining
fertility, to the roots of the thirsty plants, and stimulating them
beneath the ardent sunshine into a growth that is almost startling. In
other parts the same waters are being ingeniously led to the cultivated
lands that are being made ready for the more ordinary grain crops--the
wheat, the homely barley, and the Egyptian bean, the food of man and
beast alike; while in a country where grassy down and ordinary meadow,
such as form the pasture of sheep, oxen and kine at home, are unknown,
tract upon tract is annually sown with Egyptian clover, lentils, and
similar crops--ready for immediate use as cattle food in which the
animals can graze bit by bit as far as their tethering lines will
permit--for cutting and stacking up green in the form of ensilage, and
consumption when the crops are past--or for hay.
The granary of the world, the vast store-house for nations: people have
gone there to buy, but not to till; and yet it presents so many
qualities that the wonder is that it should have been so long neglected;
while now, in its state of transformation through the opening of the
great dam and the cutting and forming of miles more irrigating canal,
there is no bound to what may be done in the future. The time seems to
be approaching when Egypt will no longer be spoken of as a narrow strip
of fertile soil running from north to south and bordering the Nile, for
its future seems to be that the barren sand far back from its banks will
be turned into fertile land, adding its produce of corn and cotton to
the store-house of the world.
As is well-known, vast tracts of Egypt are by nature sterile; but upon
these barren primaeval sands there has been superimposed for uncountable
ages the alluvium of the Nile, so that, as an old writer says, Egypt
itself may be looked upon as the gift of one of the mightiest rivers of
the world. He speaks of the Nile as being the father of this country,
bounteous in its gift, a strange, mysterious, solitary stream which
bears down in its bosom the riches of the interior of Africa, carrying
onward from far away south the fertility of the luxuriant tropics, and
turning the sterile sand into the richest soil of the world. It is this
richness of the south that has changed the Delta from an arid waste into
a scene of matchless beauty.
One gazes upon it from the summit of one of the pyramids or some high
citadel, over cities and ruins of cities, palm grove, green savannah,
palace and garden, luxuriant cornfield, and olive grove. Far distant,
shimmering in a silvery haze and stretching away into the dimness of the
horizon, lies the boundless desert, now being rapidly reclaimed,
consequent upon the great barrage experiments for the supplying of the
many winding canals with the fertile waters of the parent river. And of
these still growing distributors of life, these bearers of commerce, the
numbers are almost beyond belief. They are the veins and arteries of
the country, depositing as they do the rich soil which furnishes
abundance, and then acting as the waterways upon which, in due time, the
harvests are borne throughout the length and breadth of the land.
There is a great discrepancy in the reports as to the number of these
canals, and statements made and chronicled a few years back are not of
much use as statistics at the present day; while the completion of the
great dam will give such an impulse to their formation that the mileage,
even if properly estimated now, will be useless as a basis ten years
hence.
One traveller, in his ignorance of the country, estimated the number of
these irrigating water distributors as only ninety, while another of
about the same date gives Upper Egypt alone six thousand. Probably,
though, in this instance he included every branch and branchlet that led
the water amongst the cultivated lands.
The water of these canals, renewed as it is by the annual risings of the
Nile, goes on steadily changing, wherever it is led, the primaeval sand
of the desert into rich deep soil, after the fashion, but on a grander
scale, of the ingenious way in which portions of fen and bog land in
north Lincolnshire and south Yorkshire have been transformed into
fertile farms. As compared to what is going on in Egypt, this process
is trivial in the extreme; but by man's forethought and ingenuity many a
peat bog and waste that aforetime grew nothing but reed and rush has
been made, by draining and leading upon it the muddy waters of the Ouse,
Trent, and their tidal tributaries, into rich and prosperous farms,
producers of the necessities of life. These warp farms, as they are
termed, stand high in favour with the cultivators of the soil. They
have taken years to produce, perhaps, and the process has consisted of
but one treatment.
In Egypt, on the contrary, this depositing of the rich mud goes on year
by year, adding fresh soil and additional fertility each season; and the
possibilities of increase are almost without limit; while the drainage
produced by the falling of the Nile, the sandy subsoil, and the
wonderful evaporation of this sunny, almost rainless land, entirely
preclude the newly fertilised tracts becoming sour and stale.
Those interested should know somewhat of the constituents of this Nile
mud, which is brought down from the south to be deposited, it must be
borne in mind, upon sand which in the course of cultivation will
naturally, as it is mingled with the mud, render it open, porous, and
highly suitable for vegetable growth. A rough analysis proves that
quite half of the deposit is argillaceous, or clayey earth, one fourth
carbonate of lime. These constituents alone should be sufficient to
gladden the heart of any farmer or gardener, without counting the iron,
carbonate of magnesia, and silica.
So many of our agricultural outposts are only to be reached by long and
tedious journeys across ocean and then inland. Egypt is, of course, in
Africa, but only a few days' journey from our own shores. The sea
transit is short and frequent; and the country, the ancient mysterious
land of the Dark Ages, is rapidly being opened out by rail. The
climate, in spite of the heat, is one of the finest in the world, and
its healthiness is proverbial; while, best of all for the would-be
adventurer, it is under an enlightened rule, beneath which progress and
civilisation are flourishing more and more.
CHAPTER TWO.
Reports from the highest quarters supply abundant statistics of the
great advantage already manifested by the completion of the Nile
Barrage. The increase of land available for culture through the
conservation of the water that has always run to waste, and the
augmented powers supplied for irrigation by holding up such vast bodies
of water, have resulted in returns that are striking in the extreme, and
this after so short a time has elapsed since the sluices were completed
and the great dams put to the test. The value of land and rentals have
gone up, water has been utilised at earlier dates than were customary of
old, and everything points not only to stability but to a future for
Egypt such as could not have been dreamed of a score of years ago. In
connection, therefore, with its future prospects from an agricultural
point of view, and the encouragement given by the Government to those
who are disposed to enter upon a business career in this favoured
country, so as to bring to bear experience, the knowledge of culture,
and the use of improved implements to add vastly to Egypt's produce, a
short sketch of what has been done by one whose faith in the delta as a
vast agricultural centre has always been strong, will not here be out of
place.
We allude to the efforts made by his Highness the Khedive in acquiring
and reclaiming tracts of land in the neighbourhood of Cairo and turning
them into fertile farms.
A trip to one of these nearest to Cairo struck a visitor directly as
being hall-marked by the stamp "Progress," for it was reached by a
little model railway which skirts his Highness's estates. After leaving
the station, a short drive brings the visitor almost at once to a series
of scenes indicating careful management and model farming, though there
is much in it that is novel to an English eye, consequent on its being
contrived to suit the exigencies of an Eastern country where but little
rain is known to fall.
One of the first objects reached upon entering the cultivated land was
the great granary or store, composed of spacious erections of but one
storey high, low-roofed, and enclosing a large central square. In some
of these buildings were stored up sacks of corn, while in others lay
large heaps of the newly picked cotton, of whose cultivation more will
be said elsewhere.
The land around this highly cultivated domain is very fertile, and the
air exhilarating; and at present it is letting at the rate of 10 pounds
per feddan, which represents the Egyptian acre, something larger than
our own. This is the present price, for enterprise so far has done
little upon this side of Cairo in the shape of market gardening,
although the district is only twelve minutes by rail from the centre of
this important city, and one hour's distance for a walking horse and
cart.
Attached to the building above referred to were well-erected ranges of
cattle-sheds, not occupied for fattening purposes, but for the culture
of the farm, this culture being carried on not by horses, but by oxen--
buffaloes and ordinary bullocks--which are regularly used, as at one
time in Old England, yoked to the plough, harrow, or roller, and on some
of the high grounds which are let by his Highness, for turning the
water-wheels, though on the model farms steam power only is used for the
purposes of irrigation.
These sheds are built in the same fashion as the granary, a noteworthy
point in connection with the big, sleek, well-fed occupants being that
instead of, as in English fashion, standing in one long row with their
backs to the visitor, they are ranged in ranks, fifty-six in all,
sideways to the spectator, facing so many feeding troughs, and each
provided with its tethering halter and a sliding iron ring attached to
an iron bar, giving freedom to each animal to stand or lie down at its
pleasure without any risk of self-inflicted injury.
As a specimen of the model-farm-like erection of these buildings, it may
be stated that the feeding troughs are of solid masonry, made impervious
and clean by an inner lining of zinc. No partitions are used to
separate these draught cattle, but by the arrangement of the haltering
they can be kept at such a distance that no two could come into contact.
Everything was beautifully clean, the great animals being amply
supplied with dry earth for litter, its disinfecting qualities being
admirable from a cleanly point of view, and valuable for the purposes of
the farm.
One of the principal foods for cattle upon the farm is _Tibn_, as it is
called by the Egyptians--chopped or bruised straw, made more nutritious,
according to the needs of the animal in feeding, by the addition of
beans or barley; and in the progress across the place a huge stack of
this chaff-like provender was passed, some ten feet high, but totally
unprotected from the weather by thatch. The reply to questions by the
manager was simple in the extreme, yet in itself a chapter on the
beautiful nature of the climate. The reason why the stack had no
protecting thatch was that there was no need, the rain was so trifling,
and when the wind and its habit of scattering stacks was mentioned, the
inquirer was told that it did no harm.
In passing one enclosure sheep were encountered--a class of farming, as
stated elsewhere, little affected on account of the absence of grass
downs and ordinary grazing fields; but these were in a
ealthy, flourishing state, well fleeced, with a fine white
semi-transparent-looking wool, indicating relationship to the Angora
breed, specimens of the latter being seen later on in fold.
Some of the fields had been devoted to the growth of cotton. This had
lately been picked and transferred to the great store, the wood of the
beautiful plant so stored being yet upon the ground waiting for transfer
to the stacks for fuel purposes, it being utilised for the steam engines
used upon the farm, especially for working the water-raising machinery
so extensively needed in this occasionally thirsty land.
Farther on an implement was being used in preparing fields for
irrigation; and as in its simplicity of construction it was dragged over
the great enclosure, it drew up the well-tilled, friable soil into
ridges or slightly raised portions whose object was to regulate the flow
of irrigating water equally all over the field, so that when it was
flooded no portion should get more than its due share, one part being
swamped while another would be comparatively dry. Simple in the extreme
in its construction, as the illustration shows, the implement was
thoroughly efficient in the way in which it did its work, with but
slight exertion on the part of the sluggish oxen by which it was drawn.
All this was novel, yet paradoxically old-world and strange, but in the
next field there was a combination of the old and new--a pair of oxen
used as in Saxon times, and down to not so many years back even near
London, patiently plodding along beneath their yoke and drawing an
emanation from our Eastern counties in the shape of a Ransome and Sims'
harrow, light and effective, apparently as much at home and progressing
as easily as if on a Suffolk farm.
There was a familiarity about these fields which took off the dead
monotony of the level, for they were surrounded by good-sized,
well-grown trees, whose aspect betokened health and a suitability of
climate, while on a nearer approach they showed their foreignness to the
soil, proving to be a variety of the well-known Siberian crab, or cherry
apple, beloved of boys, but here grown in such bulk as to suggest being
used for crushing and utilising in some special way.
One thing that strikes the European in Egypt, when passing beyond the
more carefully cultivated portions near the city, is the absence of
trees other than the indigenous palms; but here, in these
newly-reclaimed portions, much has been done, as already mentioned, in
the way of planting. For instance, the approaches to a range of
buildings in connection with this farm were studded with acacias,
ornamenting what proved to be the pigeon houses which are such a regular
adjunct to an Egyptian cultivator's home. Their occupants bear a strong
resemblance to our own blue rocks, or wood pigeons. Another building
was the dairy farmhouse, well-built, simple, and most suitable; while in
the neighbouring fields the cows were pasturing after the economical
plan carried out in our Channel Islands--where each milk-producer is not
allowed to wander through and waste the precious herbage at her own
sweet will, but is tethered to a stake--while the calves had an
enclosure to themselves. Here were many examples of experiments being
tried to improve the breed, the favourite animal being a cross between
the Swiss--Fribourg--and native; and in this cross-breeding only those
proved to be advantageous are retained. Such as do not show some marked
advance upon the native stock, either for breeding or the production of
milk, are sold.
One very fine sire was close at hand--a Swiss bull with a noble head and
short curved horns, fine and long of coat, which about brow and neck
formed itself into short, crisp curls like those that cluster upon the
brow of the classic Hercules. This grand animal greatly resembled, save
that it was much larger, one of the choice and jealously guarded
patriarchs of a Jersey cattle-shed; while his home-like aspect was added
to greatly by the familiar ring in the nose, which is not considered
necessary for the native animals.
A little farther on were those rather uncouth-looking, heavily-horned
animals, the buffaloes, which run side by side in Egyptian estimation
with the ordinary cattle for all practical purposes. The improvement in
their breed is also studied by the addition of fresh blood and the
choice of sires remarkable for special qualities. One particularly good
specimen was pointed out, distinguished by the heavy hump forward, a
fine beast lately brought from the Soudan.
There are two distinct breeds of buffalo utilised in this country--the
productions of Upper and Lower Egypt, those from the latter district
being reckoned the better.
In this portion of the farm and around the buildings fruit trees were
plentiful, diversifying the scene and adding greatly to its
attractiveness, and looking novel to a visitor from Europe, who saw an
abundant growth of the Seville or bitter orange, and the cool,
greeny-grey picturesque olive of Southern Europe and the East.
Among other fruit trees seen here were some bearing long pods, called
_chiar shambar_ by the natives. The fruit of these trees, which is long
and green, but which turns black soon after picking, seemed at a
distance like a huge bean, suggesting that the fruit was akin to the
carob or locust bean, this idea being emphasised by the sweet glutinous
pulp in which the seeds were buried. This pulp is pleasant to the
taste, but slightly bitter, and is largely used by the natives boiled up
with water, as a drink on account of its medicinal qualities.
Taken all in all, the visit to the Khedive's farm was most attractive,
and pregnant with proofs of the fertility of the well-tended land, for
on every side were examples of the successful culture of many of the
agricultural products treated of in detail from the notes of the
student-like superintendent, who has all in his charge.
The place, as before said, may be regarded as a model and example of
what can be done with land that has been looked upon for ages as so much
desert, when all that was required was industry, application, and the
ingenuity necessary for extending the action of the Nile flood. Nature
has always been ready to do the rest.
The Khedive has another tract of farm land, which he purchased some time
back, about two kilometres from the estate just described, at Koubbeh.
This is Mostorod, where he has a simple-looking villa. On the way here
one of the first things that attract the attention of an Englishman is
that home-like contrivance so often missing in foreign countries--a
hedge dividing the fields from the roadway and separating them from each
other. These were unknown before the time of Abbas Helmi the Second,
and what may be done in time to come in the surroundings of farms by
means of the simple, well cut back hawthorn remains to be proved. Here
the shrubby growth, chosen for its neat form and comparatively rapid
development, is the bitter orange.
At Mostorod many of the surroundings are marked by the energetic
proceedings of the practical farmer. Here steam is at work, like the
patient slave it is, forming the motive power in one case for raising
water for all farming purposes, in another setting in action the mills,
which rapidly turn out and clean the meal ground from wheat and Indian
corn.
Buildings are here containing the various grains and seeds; others are
the storehouses for one or other of the three pickings produced in the
cultivation of cotton; and at the entrance of every building, just
inside the door, there is a pitch pine wood frame, with its glass
covering, and a paper on which is a record of the amount and nature of
whatever is brought in or taken out of the building in the shape of
corn, cotton, seed, or whatever may be stored.
Here, in opposition to much that is modern, there is a large,
old-fashioned Egyptian stable, very thick of wall. The building is
divided into two chambers, connected and lit from overhead, the light
coming through the roof of wood and rafters thickly thatched with reeds.
These rafters are supported by thick round columns formed of the
ancient, sun-dried brick for which Egypt has long been famed. Near by
something of the old-world fashion of the place was visible in a typical
grinding mill such as may be seen in common use in pretty well every
village. It had a chamber to itself, and differed little from those
which might have been seen in England fifty or a hundred years ago, set
in action by an often blindfolded horse, but here worked by a bullock.
Ornamentation is not wanting at Mostorod, for the villa has its garden
brightened by fruit trees, and the pillar-stemmed palms, with their
leafy crowns, are frequent objects in the transparent, sunny air.
Close at hand is the village on the Khedivial estate. In it the streets
are narrow and the houses of one height, thoroughly waterproof, and of
the familiar construction, of sun-dried bricks covered with white
plaster, and, being of an earlier date in the improvement the Khedive is
striving for in the poorer class dwellings, not to be compared with the
spick and span new houses he has lately had erected at Mariout, not far
from Alexandria.
Hard by this village is a very large barn or stack yard with more native
pigeon houses, the whole of the surroundings being extremely quaint and
picturesque.
Again, a short distance onward stands the native village of Mostorod,
with its attractive little mosque and a tomb erected to the memory of a
saint.
The Ismailia Canal supplies water to the Koubbeh and Mostorod estates,
and in this neighbourhood is a good deal of very valuable agricultural
land, some portions of which are let to the fellaheen for three months
in a year, so as to enable them to grow a crop of maize.
Hereabouts, tethered in the clover fields, a herd of the Khedive's
camels are pastured, many of these being bred for carrying purposes,
others (the slighter of build) for riding and speed. The scene is
attractive from its verdure, but comparatively treeless, though it is
worthy of mention that two solitary weeping willows do their best to
adorn the landscape--a plain with the suggestions of home in the shape
of lapwings, or birds bearing a very strong resemblance, which fly up
here and there.
This estate is close to Heliopolis--the ancient On--where almost the
only suggestions of the City of the Sun are the sunshine and a great
square piece of white stone, bearing hieroglyphs, and in perfect
preservation, while in the distance stands up in solitary state the
far-famed Obelisk.
CHAPTER THREE.
"Words, words, words!" quoth Hamlet, and the reader of this sketch of
the possibilities in the way of cultivation offered by the Khedive's
dominions may be disposed to contemptuously say the same. But in the
following pages it is proposed to give proof of what may be done in an
ordinary way by one who is gardener for pleasure and health, supplier of
ordinary produce to the market, or farmer upon a larger scale, without
looking for a moment upon the vast increase that is bound to follow the
wider and wider distribution of that life of such a land--abundant
water, not merely for irrigation, but in this case charged year by year
with the rich fertilising mud of the vast equatorial regions regularly
borne down by the Nile in flood.
Among the first questions an intending settler might ask respecting the
country that he intends to make his temporary or future home would
naturally be, "What is the place like? What sort of seasons are they?"
Egypt is a country which may be said to be blessed with four seasons.
There is that which begins in July with the inundation of the Nile, when
for about two months the whole country of the Delta may be likened to a
vast lake dotted with islands represented by the towns and villages.
Naturally, then, the air is moist, and mornings and evenings have their
mists. In the second season, answering to our winter and early spring,
we have cold nights; but the days are hot, and the vegetation is rapid
and luxuriant. The third, corresponding to our spring, is the least
attractive; while the fourth, which continues until the rising of the
Nile, is in the highest degree delightful.
Everyone has praised the Egyptian nights--cloudless skies, an intensely
bright moon, so bright that at harvest time, for reasons in connection
with the shedding of the grain, it is the custom amongst the farmers and
cultivators of the soil to take advantage of the coolness and light to
commence garnering their crops at midnight. So bright is the moon in
this extraordinarily clear atmosphere that the peasantry who sleep in
the open air are careful to shade their eyes from the rays, which are
often said to produce a more painful effect than those of the sun.
These pages contain the experience of long years of patient study of the
cultivation of Egypt, of that carried on by the native, who for ages
past has looked to the soil for his sustenance. And of his practical
knowledge, that which is valuable has been adopted; while experiment,
experience, and the effects of modern cultivation have run with it side
by side.
Every gardener and farmer knows, however enlightened he may be and fond
of the modern ways of doing things, that it is not wise to look
slightingly upon old-fashioned customs. _Experientia docet_ is a
well-known maxim, and the experience taught often by generations of
disappointments is worthy of all respect.
Men go on cultivating and growing certain things which excite the
contempt of a stranger, but too often he lives to learn that there was
good reason for the practice, hence, animated by the spirit of respect
for the old, while striving to introduce the new and improved, the notes
and descriptions herein contained may be depended upon as being
thoroughly practical and well worthy the attention of every cultivator
who has at heart the future of the Delta and the higher irrigated lands
of Egypt.
Further, it may be presumed that every reader is fully acquainted with
the fact that lower Egypt possesses a climate without extreme variations
of temperature; that winter is hardly known but as a name; and that,
though changes have taken place of late years, probably from increased
cultivation and planting, the rainfall is extremely small. And yet the
fertility of Egypt is proverbial, and due to this annual flooding of the
lands by the Nile, which--after the fashion, already referred to, of the
northern midlands of England, where so many acres have been flooded and
drained after a lengthened deposit of mud, or "warp," as it is termed--
become rich in the extreme. The warping in Yorkshire and Lincolnshire
is an artificial and protracted process, carried out once only; the
warping of the land of Egypt is natural, and repeated year by year;
while as soon as the water has run off, the coating of mud, rich in all
the qualities of fertility, is ready to bear, after the merest
scratching of the soil, its abundant one, two, or even three crops in a
year.
Here are possibilities, then, for the cultivator who is ready to bring
to bear all the appliances of modern science, the discoveries of
practical agricultural chemistry, and, above all, the mechanical and
ingenious inventions so admirable in a flat, open country, unbroken by
hedge or tree.
Among the minor objects familiar to the tourist in his journey up the
Nile are the various means of raising water for the irrigation of the
crops. These have been, and still continue to be in many places
extremely primitive, for, as before stated, the fellaheen in their
conservative fashion are prone to cling to the inventions of their
forefathers. Hence they may still be seen laboriously at work with
their shadoofs, sakiehs, and other water-wheels worked by hand or mule
power, raising the fertilising fluid to a sufficient height to be
discharged and flow of itself, spreading over the patches of land
requiring irrigation.
But these clumsy contrivances are giving place in the newly-reclaimed
and cultivated parts of the Delta to modern machinery, urged by motive
power, notably by steam, though to a great extent advantage is taken of
the wind; for it is a common thing to see in the landscape the circular
disc-like object, as noted at a distance, formed by a windmill with its
many fans, or "vans," standing at the edge of some canal or by one of
the many wells that have been dug upon the higher grounds.
For though tract after tract may be desert, presenting nothing but
coarse growth and sand ready to drift before the wind, there is not much
difficulty in finding water, notably in the wide plateau known as
Mariout, spreading out in the direction of the Libyan Desert from
Alexandria. Here the sinking of wells results in the finding of water
at depths varying from twenty to forty feet, and boring to a greater
depth would doubtless produce a fuller supply, for in so flat and porous
a land, within easy measurable distance of the great inland sea, there
is every probability that an inexhaustible supply is within touch. And
nowadays the various ingenious contrivances of the mechanical engineer
are always ready, and at small cost, to supplement during the dry times
the abundant supply offered by the great river. Of course, this deals
solely with the higher grounds that are not reached without mechanical
help by the dam-supplied network of canals that already veins the
country, and projects for the increase of which are, since the opening
of the great works at Assiout and Assouan, either under consideration,
or already planned.
The slow, clumsy hand labour of the shadoof and the awkward
cattle-worked sakieh, or earthen pot surrounded water-wheel, is now
being superseded in the larger tracts of cultivation by such ingenious
pieces of mechanism as the centrifugal pump, worked by steam, and so
contrived that it can be utilised on the bank of river or canal, and
with a suction tube turned down at any angle, so that it can be lowered
into any of the common wells that are sunk in all directions. The
portable steam engine used in connection therewith is one of the
grandest slaves of civilisation, playing its part on the large farms for
traction, threshing, straw chopping, or other of the many necessities of
cultivation. By means of these centrifugal pumps after the middle of
November on large estates the water has to be forced into the service
(estate) canals.
A ten-horse power engine, driving a ten-inch pump, will irrigate the
same number of acres in twelve hours, lifting the water five feet, the
cost of raising water being two shillings per acre. The small occupiers
of land sometimes raise their supply from wells and canals by means of
Persian wheels or Archimedean screws.
CHAPTER FOUR.
At Cairo when the Nile commences its annual rise, for the first few days
its tint seems to be green; but the general tone during the inundation
is of a dirty red, of course due to its being thickened with the mud
brought down from the south. During this rising, irrigation can be sent
freely flowing over all cultivated lands, as the river continues about
the level of the banks till the middle of November.
In simple language, irrigation means the turning of desert into richly
fertile producing land. A great deal has been said and done, but
everything points to the fact that, however great and productive a
garden Egypt has been for countless years, it is still almost, as it
were, in its infancy. The erection of that stupendous piece of
engineering, the Assouan Dam, has already had effects that have
surpassed the expectations of its projectors; and writing upon this
subject, Sir William Willcocks, a gentleman whose knowledge of the
position is of the highest value, points out a series of facts that are
almost startling in their suggestions. He draws attention to the fact
that there are still two million acres of excellent land waiting to be
reclaimed after the simple fashion herein described, and then requiring
to be irrigated to the full extent needed--that is to say, perennially.
These are large figures to deal with, but Egypt is a vast country, and
its powers of production almost beyond belief; but everything is bound
up in the one need--water supply; and it is this furnishing of life to
plants, and enabling them to find it latent, as it were, in the
far-spreading plains that are as yet but sand and dust, that is taking
the attention of our great engineers.
Here they find room to exert their powers. It is only a year ago that
we had the inauguration of the first great stride; and now we are told
that the thirsty country asks for more. To fully carry out the
perennial irrigation that shall fertilise the two million acres still
waiting, "the country requires one milliard of cubic metres of water per
five hundred thousand acres"--that is to say, four times that quantity.
At the present time, with the height to which it has been already
erected, the Assouan Dam holds up and supplies one milliard of these
cubic metres of water in all, a sufficiency for five hundred thousand
acres of agricultural and garden land. It is proposed to raise it
twenty-one feet higher, with the result that its holding powers will be
so vastly increased that the supply will be doubled, and hence be
sufficient for another five hundred thousand acres. But even then there
will be a milliard acres still waiting for a supply of water to the
extent of two milliards of cubic metres of water for themselves. Whence
is this supply to come?
The engineers are ready with their answer, and only ask for the capital,
not to float some mad scheme, but to spread bounteously the rich water
which turns, as above said, the desert into fertile land.
The plan, or project, is to form a huge reservoir in the Wady Rayan,
which will with ease supply the water needed at a cost of about two
million pounds--a large sum of money, but ridiculously small in
comparison with the results. There is, however, a drawback in
connection with this reservoir--a weakness, so to speak, which alone
would render its value questionable, for while in April and May, during
the flood time, its supply would be enormous, it would fall off very
much in June, and furnish but very little in July.
But now in connection therewith we find the truth of the old proverbial
saying, "Co-operation is strength." Alone it would be weak, but if made
now and worked in connection with the Assouan Reservoir it becomes
strong, and the two being tapped in turn as the need arose, the
combination would have tremendous results, one reservoir so helping the
other that sufficient water could be depended upon to keep up a
perennial supply.
To give Sir William Willcocks' words:
Let us now imagine that both reservoirs are full of water, and it is
April 1st. The Wady Rayan Reservoir will be opened on to the Nile and
give all the water needed in that month, while the Assouan Reservoir
will be maintained at its full level. In May the Wady Rayan Reservoir
will give nearly the whole supply, and the Assouan Reservoir will give
a little. In June the Wady Rayan Reservoir will give a small part of
the supply, and the Assouan Reservoir will give the greater part. In
July the Wady Rayan Reservoir will give nothing, and the Assouan
Reservoir will give the whole supply required. Working together in
this harmonious and beautiful manner, these reservoirs, which are the
true complements of each other will easily provide the whole of the
water needed for Egypt.
Now, this raising of the Assouan Dam to the height proposed means an
expenditure of five hundred thousand pounds, and the time for the
completion of this addition and raising of the works two years, at the
end of which period, as we have seen, its power for irrigation will be
doubled; while to make the additional reservoir, and enable it to
discharge its vast extra supply at the cost named, will take three
years; four years will then be required to bring the water to its proper
height--seven years in all; so that in that time full arrangements can
be made for the perennial irrigation of the whole of Egypt.
Huge sums of money these to spend or put into the soil, two millions and
a half sterling; but let us see what there is to be said on the credit
side.
Take one point alone. The increase in the cotton crop of Egypt would be
most extensive, and its value enormous. Then there is the land itself.
Here we have so many extra acres, only partially irrigated, but which by
this raising of the supply of water will be changed from partial supply
land into constant--that is, each acre will be enabled to tap the
reservoirs at all times of the year, according to the cultivator's need,
with the consequent rise in value of the land of thirty pounds per
feddan, or acre; and that means, according to Sir William Willcocks, an
increase in the wealth of Egypt to the extent of sixty million pounds.
From one bold stroke! Sixty million pounds for the expenditure of five.
Not bad, this, for the engineers. But still, it is but the beginning
of what may be done in the Khedive's country, for it is full of
suggestions to be carried out by an enterprising people for the making
of the native and those of our own country who are prepared to look far
ahead. The amount of land to be reclaimed is enormous; and what land!
For countless ages the Nile has flowed down, bringing with it its
fertile mud, depositing some by the way, carrying other some out to sea,
to be lost in the depths of the Mediterranean; but still, as time rolled
on, adding to, and raising higher, the huge Delta through which the
various mouths made their way; so that in these lowest portions of Egypt
the depth of rich soil must be enormous.
Here lie the lakes and canals of olden formation, shallowed and choked
with mud, and rendered almost impassable for transit, but only waiting
for the engineers to contrive modern works, the result of survey and
level, feeding canals and the forming of reservoirs to supply irrigation
water for freeing the land of its salt, making easy the navigation of
the district, and simplifying the conveyance of its grain and other
crops.
All this development is awaiting enterprise and capital low down in the
Delta. But the engineers have not stopped near home and the Khedive's
capital; they have cast their eyes afar across that vast extent of
barbarism, the re-conquered Soudan, where, bordering upon the Nile, it
is often "water, water everywhere, and not a drop" for the crops to
drink.
Sir William Garstin has been busy here, surveying and examining what can
be done towards and beyond Khartoum. Here rich tracts of fertile land
are lying on both sides of the Blue Nile, to the extent, roughly
speaking, of some three millions of acres. This land of Upper Egypt is
as rich in its capabilities as that of the Delta; but it has qualities
which the latter does not possess, and is more suitable for the
production of excellent cotton, which can be sown as a flood crop and
reaped in winter, an advantage which the seasons will not permit in
Egypt.
Here, again, then, is an opening for enterprise and capital in the
future, for it must not be forgotten that the Suakin-Berber Railway,
well in progress, opens up this part of the country, one which some of
these days will be brought well in touch with Liverpool and the northern
manufacturing towns, as the cotton-growing capabilities of Upper Egypt
extend.
CHAPTER FIVE.
In a country which depends upon floods and their deposit for its
fertility, one of the first questions likely to be asked by a practical
man is, What about the drains? He knows perfectly well, from reading
and report, that the evaporation of the waters that have for the time
being turned vast tracts of land literally into swamps must be enormous,
but at the same time some plan for carrying off the superabundant
moisture must be in force. Let him learn at once that in Egyptian
agriculture there are no underground tiled drains in use; but open ones
are formed upon land that requires improving, such as the rice fields
and those which, when cultivation has commenced, are found to be
impregnated with salts, while a great deal is done by the Government,
under whose direction large main cuts are dug to drain off the water on
low-lying lands.
On the rich soils water may be lying to a depth of four inches after a
flood, but it is so readily absorbed that in six hours none will be left
on the Surface; but infiltration from irrigation canals sometimes
damages the crops alongside, and in such a case as that a small catch
drain will prevent further mischief.
With regard to irrigation, two systems are carried out, the one peculiar
to Lower Egypt, the other being utilised in Upper. In Lower Egypt the
canal is used for the supply of water to the crops. In Upper Egypt the
manner adopted is technically termed the "basin system."
In this latter method embankments are formed to enclose tracts of land
well within reach of the Nile flood, which may contain from two thousand
to forty thousand acres, according to the means of, or facilities
offered to, the agriculturist. Afterwards the proceedings are
exceedingly simple. When the inundation is at its greatest height,
openings are made and the water is allowed to flow from the river till
the sandy surface is covered to a depth of six feet. Then the matter,
suspended in the muddy waters, is slowly deposited and goes on sinking
till November, when openings are made into canals, and the water is
allowed to slowly drain off and make its way back into the river, when
the surface of glistening mud that is left is considered ripe for
cultivation, and according to the season may measure perhaps four inches
in depth.
As soon as the water is gone, the farming operations begin, and in the
simplest and probably the oldest form. There is nothing more to be done
in these cases, no ploughing or harrowing; but wheat, barley, beans,
clover, linseed, and lentils are sown broadcast by the patient
labourers, the sowers often sinking knee deep in the mud as they slowly
plod or almost wade to and fro. The next proceeding is the burying of
the seed, which is generally effected by drawing a large beam of timber
over the muddy surface, though at times, when the consistency is
greater, the seed is covered in by hand-hoeing. That is all, and the
agriculturist leaves the rest for the time being to the efforts of the
sun. Germination soon begins, and rapid growth succeeds in the moist
mud; while these crops do not need or receive any further irrigation
except from rain, which may fall two or three times in the course of
growth.
But there are times when no rain at all will come to help the crops,
which, however, seem to suffer very little, from the simple fact that
the thorough saturation of the subsoil by the flood, and the constant
gentle evaporation going on, make up to a certain extent for the want of
genial showers, and the failure seems to be confined to the straw alone,
which is shorter than if its growth had been influenced by the dropping
clouds.
The floods of European lands are, of course, only occasional, accidents
due to a prevalence of storm waters, which the regular rivers and the
artificial drainage of the country have not power to carry off; while
generally they last but a short time, and instead of being beneficial
are destructive. The Nile flow is in every respect the reverse.
Instead of being occasional and of short duration, it is a part of
Nature's routine, and perfectly wondrous in its regularity; while in
place of being temporary, as in the floods of our own islands, we have
here a lasting overflow.
Again, a flood in the British Islands, where the rivers burst their
banks and spread over meadow-land and arable fields, leaves the soil
soured, sodden, and obnoxious to the plants which are still alive, whole
crops and plantations being often swept away, while those that remain
are on the high road to perishing from rottenness.
In Egypt the subsoil of sand is ready to absorb, and the ardent sun to
rapidly dry, the surface of the mud as soon as the flood sinks, after
its stay of months; while the rapidity of growth soon makes up for the,
so to speak, dormant state of the cultivated ground that has been
flooded, and, as aforesaid, the water departs, leaving its fertilising
riches behind. Then, as stated, follows without further tilling the
sowing of the crops, which result in abundant growth. This annual
regularity is only marred by the extent of the inundation, which is