Supposing an enterprising personage to have taken up a tract of the
desert of, say, one hundred acres in Egypt, where divisions must not be
looked for in the way of fence or hedge, but dependence placed upon the
irrigating drain, it will be as well to give a list of the farm
implements he would require, and their cost--always presuming that he is
prepared to be content, certainly at first, with the ordinary
contrivances of the country, which are rough, but very cheap.
Necessaries are given here, and nothing more; while the accompanying
illustrations spread through the text afford a very good idea of the
objects that will become familiar upon his pioneer land.
Four native ploughs, exceedingly rough in construction, for tickling the
soil that is to laugh with a harvest, their cost about ten shillings
each; a baulk wood, to be drawn by oxen, mules, or donkeys, over the
yielding surface and act the part of a roller, six shillings; a ridging
box, for preparing the land for potatoes or sugar-cane, two shillings;
two scrapers, eight shillings; chains, six shillings; one lorry, five
pounds; two box carts at four pounds each; two threshing norags at eight
pounds each; total, thirty-two pounds ten shillings.
Of course, it is open to the man of enterprise to invest in the
different ingenious contrivances of the British agricultural implement
maker, such as the admirable invention the Patent Turn-Wrest Plough,
invented by Mr Thomas Wright, whose experience in the cultivation of
the Khedive's land resulted in his bringing to perfection an implement
exactly suited to Egyptian needs.
The list given above names all that is absolutely necessary in a country
where the tiller of the soil is so munificently aided by the almost
incessant sunshine and abundant water.
But the farm implement _par excellence_ of the fellaheen, the tool which
is to him what the shovel is to the British navvy, an instrument with
which nearly everything in the way of moving the soil can be done, is
the fas, the broad-headed hoe seen carried by the two fellaheen
labourers in the engraving accompanying this chapter. It is one of the
first inventions of the cultivator, and not so very far removed from its
pierced flint representative occasionally turned up amongst the weapons
and tools of primitive man; but when bronze, and later on iron, began to
yield to the inventor, and the action of fire was utilised by the Tubal
Cains of their day, the broad-headed hoe began to develop; and we have
it spread, in a very similar form to that still used in Egypt, all round
the world where men commenced to till the soil. For we see it to this
day very similar in shape in those two vast agricultural countries,
India and China, while in Egypt it is handled by the fellaheen labourer
in a way which is beyond praise.
The native plough, as seen by the photographic reproduction, is a very
primitive implement, the date of whose invention must be sought for by
an examination of some of the characteristic gravings in marble to be
found in the Egyptian tombs, where the pursuits of the old-time
inhabitants are recorded in a style that is absolutely wondrous.
It consists of a pole of wood measuring about ten feet in length, which
is strongly bolted to the sole or body of the plough. This soie, which
measures three feet, is shod with a share resembling a pointed shovel.
The end of the pole is attached by a rope to the yoke, which lies across
the necks of the bullocks, buffaloes, or even camels--as seen in the
case of the Norag, drawn round and round over the threshing-floor--which
are utilised by the Egyptian cultivator according to his means, while
the labourer guides the plough by the aid of an upright handle. This
implement does not turn over the soil, and may be properly classed as a
one-tined cultivator. There is a quaintness and old-world look, as
shown in the photographs, in the mixture of forces, a huge buffalo bull
being mated with a small native ox, a bullock with some fine-grown ass,
while cows are frequently yoked together to help and drag the light
plough. Whether horses of the type of our heavy, slow-going farm breed
will finally work their way to the front remains to be seen; but at
present they have hardly begun to oust the old-world yokes of strangely
assorted beasts from the turning up of the soil. It is more probable,
unless the fuel difficulty stands in the way, that the larger tracts
will be further brought into cultivation by means of steam and the deep
subsoil ploughs which do such an immensity of work in a single day.
As will be noted in the description, the modern native plough is single
stilted, and it might be supposed in a country like this that such an
implement had been in use ever since the plough's invention; but as in
many other records that have been unearthed, engraven in stone in the
wonderful pictorial writings found in temple and tomb, we have proof
that this was not always the case; for in the days of the agricultural
King Ti, who is supposed to date back to the Fifth Dynasty, that is some
five thousand years in the dim past, there is a representation of a
plough in use with two handles, very much the same in shape as those
brought out quite lately and known as the "American chilled," these
being guided in our own old familiar way.
The Baulk wood used as a harrow or roller is drawn by two bullocks, and
answers its purpose in smoothing the very sandy soil fairly well.
The Ridging Box, or Baitana, is used for raising low ridges on the flat
to retain the water for irrigation purposes.
The Scraper is a box with two handles for levelling high land and
earning the sand to lower portions.
The Norag is a massive frame fitted with three or four axles, upon which
are fixed steel discs twenty inches in diameter and with four or five
discs alternately on each axle. This is drawn by a pair of bullocks
over the cut grain till it is threshed out. This implement is, by long
proof, most effectual in its action, for when drawn over the grain
sheaves it acts in a two-fold way, loosening the ear, or, in the cases
of some leguminous crops, the pods--and, of course, vastly helped by the
treading of the oxen's hoofs--so that the grain falls through right to
the bottom and is covered by fresh quantities, sheaves, or the like, of
the crop that is being threshed. Its second action is that the edges of
the discs are constantly bruising and half cutting the straw or stalks,
which in a dry season or from want of effective irrigation are often
hard and woody. It must be understood that the straw is not used; as in
England, for litter, but as the most important food for cattle, and this
action of the Norag, with its sharp discs, so bruises and chops up the
straw that it becomes softened in its harshness, and far better for the
animals to which it is supplied for food. In fact, during the time when
it is most supplied to the cattle, which is during the summer or least
abundant season, it is a work of necessity to make it more attractive to
the animals, this bruising and cutting bringing forth the flavour of
such juices as still remain in the plant, making it slightly aromatic
and certainly more palatable as food.
We in England have not been ignorant of the value in cattle feeding of
endeavouring to give some zest to the coarser kinds of fodder which
economy necessitates in the case of the British farmer. Poor hay, musty
grain, consequent upon a bad harvest, and unsatisfying chaff, are eaten
by unfortunate cattle, which, suffering as it were from Hobson's choice
of having that or none, eat the provender supplied without protest; but
Nature resents it for them, and they show it in their poor condition.
Of course, in the case of a well-bred horse the matter is different; he
snuffs at and blows upon the untempting contents of his manger, and then
turns away in disgust from that which his cloven-hoofed companions
patiently chew.
But in many a case this damaged grain, hay, or straw has been made
attractive by a sprinkle of one of the savoury cattle foods that were
invented and imitated some forty or fifty years ago, a portion of the
ingredients in one kind consisting of the broken up and stickily sweet
locust bean and the contents of its pod, with a dash of the bitter and
aromatic fenugreek. But in Egypt, where the rain does so little towards
injuring the straw or stalk, such musty fare seldom falls to the lot of
the native cattle, while this chopped or bruised straw, the _tibn_
already mentioned, is constantly prepared at the time of threshing by
the action of the ingeniously constructed Norag.
No one can see the spot laid down for the reception of the harvest
produce in Egypt--so much hard-beaten earth upon which the peas, beans,
or grain of various sorts are thrown, ready for the oxen to drag over it
this peculiar revolving wheeled or disked implement--without being
reminded of the place where the plague was stayed--the threshing-floor
of Araunah the Jebusite; nor can he help comparing the native plough,
that simple scarifier, with antique agricultural tillers of the soil
depicted on the most ancient sculpture or penned in olden manuscripts,
as in use by ancient nations as well as by our Saxon ancestors. The
ploughs of the West many, many centuries back are almost precisely the
same as those we see in the Egypt of to-day, save in the cases where he
who drives the plough has to deal with a hard and heavy earth crust far
different to the light and sandy soil of Egypt, whose labourer guides a
plough with one hand; for in one antique representation of ploughing the
labourer steers the agricultural implement with his left and wields in
his right a heavy axe, whose purpose is to break the clods prior to the
passing of the implement he steers.
Ingeniously constructed, but that is all that can be said of the native
threshing machine, for amongst the poorer class cultivators its
manufacture is almost inconceivably rough, and clumsy in the extreme.
No verbal description could compete with that afforded by the
photo-engraving that accompanies these pages, depicting, as it does, the
rough, effective implement, its attendants with their quaint forks and
rakes, and, above all, the driver, who adds his weight to the farming
implement and shoulders his very merciful speed-inducing wand for the
benefit of his mixed yoke. This is, of course, an awkward team, but not
infrequent; and the Egyptian farmer who first attempted this application
of force must have been as eccentric as he was ingenious when he coupled
on either side of such a rough pole a patient camel and a native bull.
But somehow, and by a careful division of labour and adjustment of the
yoke, the two patient beasts may be seen plodding on round and round the
smooth, level, modern representative of the old Biblical
threshing-floor. The more regular yoke attached to the Norag, which
from its cutting and bruising qualities has been translated by the
French "Hache paille," or chop-straw--this bears astounding similarity
to the "whop-straw" shared by the old-fashioned British bucolic with his
flail--is seen in the other photograph of the pair of native cows,
though very frequently it is drawn by a yoke of oxen, by the big, clumsy
buffaloes, or even by a yoke consisting of one of each, the oxen taking
the palm for their sturdiness and staying power. This mode of threshing
and bruising and chopping the straw is carried out in a similar mode in
parts of India.
Here though these old ways are giving place to the use of modern
machinery, which is readily adopted by the Egyptian, who naturally does
not find in the threshing machine the old failing complained of by the
British farmer, to wit, that it bruised and broke up the straw,
rendering it unfit to use as thatching or to make into the neat, pale
golden trusses once so familiar in the market.
There is, however, an unpleasant feature in the native threshing in
connection with the samples of corn. As may be supposed, when the
threshing is at an end and the _tibn_ stacked, or rather piled in a
heap, leaving the grain to be shovelled up, no amount of winnowing and
sifting can remove from it a certain amount of sullying brought about by
the constant trampling of the oxen.
This has, in the past, acted inimically to the success of the fine,
hard, dry, shot-like grain of Egypt in foreign markets; but in these
days of advance not only has the bullock-worked European threshing
machine made its way into the Egyptian fields, but it is no uncommon
thing for the pleasant hum of the steam thresher to be heard where the
ingenious machinery of England is carrying on its untiring labour of
threshing out, winnowing, and filling its sacks of grain, as much at
home as if it were upon some Yorkshire or Lincolnshire farm.
It will not be out of place, after dealing with the Egyptian _tibn_, to
state here that experienced cultivators have found the advantage of
carefully feeding their working bullocks so as to obtain for them the
good, sound stamina which will be naturally followed by the best amount
of work. This they find by sprinkling amongst the chopped straw or
_tibn_ supplied about one-third in weight of beans, not crushed or
ground, but either whole or split; for it has been noticed that the
draught animals flourish better upon this food than upon bean meal;
while the process of splitting, Mr Wallace states, saves the bean from
the attack of one of the Egyptian farmer's minor plagues--the weevil;
for, as if governed by some wondrous instinct in their preparations for
the continuation of their species, and a desire to ensure for them good
wholesome food upon which to feed, these creatures do not lay their eggs
in damaged grain.
Of late years many of the European implements have been introduced--
Ransomes' threshers and straw--bruisers, one-way or balance ploughs,
harrows, clod-crushers, horse-hoes, Norwegian harrows, spring-tooth
cultivators, steam ploughs and cultivators, mowers, reapers, and
binders, maize-shellers, seed graders, broadcast-sowing machines, and
seed drills.
European ploughs, as they invert the earth, are naturally the most
beneficial to the growth of the crop, as by bringing the under-soil to
the surface to receive benefit from the sun and air, they greatly
improve the root range of the plants.
Steam ploughing is gradually gaining in favour, owing to the scarcity of
work-bullocks. A few of the large proprietors have recently purchased
plants or entire gear. The scythe for cutting clover has been found,
too, a great improvement upon the antique native fashion of pulling by
hand, the saving of expense being seventy per cent. But a great
drawback to the adoption of European implements is the aversion of the
Egyptian farm labourer to any innovation, his want of intelligence in
handling what to him appears complicated machinery, and his
unwillingness to learn. Here, though, in common justice it must be said
that he does not stand alone, for the experiences of the British farmer
in most of our counties, and his battles with the pig-headed
conservatism of his men, would form an amusing chronicle. The clumsy
implement of his forefathers, invented, historians say, some five
thousand years ago, is in the native's eyes perfectly right, and could
not be better; and he prefers to go on blistering or hardening his hands
in what he looks upon as the good old ways, until he is forced to handle
modern machines, and then by very, very slow degrees he begins to see,
but not before he has broken many, or put them out of gear. But
unfortunately the farm labourer is not the sole offender, as the history
of the introduction of mechanism of any kind will tell.