If armed with the little enterprise and capital necessary for making a
commencement in farming or growing fruit and vegetables in Egypt for the
market, a cultivator would find that land could be obtained within easy
reach of the great towns of the Delta--Cairo and Alexandria--at a very
moderate price; but it is only right to add that this price, consequent
upon the great irrigation schemes in progress, is still rising by leaps
and bounds. For the soil, where reachable by the flood waters of the
Nile, now conserved and carried in every direction by irrigation canals,
is practically inexhaustible, and, as previously stated, is often of
great depth.
The land is to be purchased with proper titles and registration, giving
the necessary security to an alien who is desirous of making his home in
the Delta, or rented, if preferred, at a moderate consideration,
including water for irrigation. The country is well policed, there is
freedom from contact with the inhabitants of the surrounding desert, and
a cultivator would have to deal with a quiet, docile people, fairly
industrious--that is to say, lovers of work after the fashion of the
calm, placid Moslem, who takes life as it is, and seems to make it one
of his tenets that there is no need to hurry.
He possesses none of the hurry and rush of Western civilisation; but, on
the other hand, he is patient, ignorant, fairly teachable, and willing
to work for exceedingly moderate daily payment. The supply of this
labour under a kindly, solvent, and honestly paying master is abundant
and never fails.
The illustrations of the fellaheen farm labourers and their wives are
typical of the class of people with whom he would have to deal, and if
the new adventurer objected to the class of hut they occupy, and had
lofty ideas about model dwellings and the introduction of lighter
implements in place of the clumsy, adze-like hoes with which they are
armed rather than furnished, the advice given to him would be to follow
that of the old Latin proverb, "Festina lente," and go by degrees in
that, as in most of the other matters of culture, for it takes time to
alter custom and change old-fashioned routine.
It may be here added that all great advance and reversals of custom
should be cautiously attempted with the land. Still Nature is easier to
deal with than man, and less likely to resent alteration when attempted
by a practised hand.
As a whole, for the encouragement of those who wish to try the
experiment in a foreign land, let them understand that farming in Egypt
is child's play compared to that in Great Britain. There are no wet hay
and cereal harvests, there is neither snow nor frost to damage the
crops, no high winds, no floods, no ground game to do mischief:
In the season of hay-making, with no possibility of a drop of rain
falling, the fellah makes the worst of all hay by allowing it to be
burnt to an indigestible fibre--would that he had a training in the
uncertain climate of Great Britain! The wheat is harvested when dead
ripe. Part may be cut, and part may be allowed to remain for six weeks
without deterioration. A contrast this to the harvests in bonnie
Scotland, where the corn has lain sodden until it has rotted away in the
deplorable weather of the year 1903.
There is a good old proverb that is applicable to most things--certainly
to farming in Egypt. It is that "the less there is to do, the worse it
is done." Verily it is so here. Nature is most kindly, and with ample
moisture, abundant fertilisation, and plenteous sunshine, she does
pretty well half of the fellahs' work thoroughly well, while their half
to complete the operations is carried out with a careless indifference
to success that is deplorable. The people's wants are few, and now that
under a generous rule they have liberty and payment for the work they
perform, they seem quite content to plod on in easy slothfulness.
Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof, so why wear themselves out
by toil and the struggle for things better than those which surround
them?
All this in connection with the possibilities of this country raises the
question, Can the practice of Egyptian agriculture be improved?
The answer of one who has toiled amongst the people for years, whose
work has been that of reclaiming tracts of desert land, making endless
experiments as to the best suited crops for Egypt and the best ways of
producing them, is: Emphatically, yes!