"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.