Far back in the world’s history a fracture of the earth’s crust took place in the region which is now Egypt, and the sea filled the valley as far as a point not much north of Assouan. Into this fiord ran several rivers from the high ground east and west, bearing down with them heaps of detritus, and forming small deltas like the plain of Kom-Ombos. On the sea-bottom were laid down deposits of sand and gravel, and then the land began to rise. Meantime the volcanic movements of East Central Africa had shaped the country into its present configuration, and the rivers which drained from the great lakes and swamps of the south, and those which flowed down from the high plateau on the east, combining their waters somewhere about Khartoum, pushed their marvellous course northwards, and began the creation of the fertile soil of Egypt. From this time onwards the climatic conditions must have continued very much what they are to-day. Changes, of course, there have been in the level of the land; but the sea-valley had become a river-valley, and year by year the annual flood increased the cultivable soil, and refreshed it with moisture, just as it would be doing to-day if left untrammelled by the devices of man.

Late in the history of the river-valley, but very early in the history of humanity, this favoured strip of country became the home of men, who doubtless cast their seed upon the slime left by the retreating waters, and reaped their crops long before the dawn of history. It is remarkable and characteristic of the conditions of the country that tradition ascribes to the earliest King of Egypt, Menes, the first King of the First Dynasty, the first attempts to regulate the flow of the river—in other words, the first scheme of irrigation proper.

If it were possible to divert the river from its course, and effectually to bar its way before it reached the boundaries of Egypt, what an appalling catastrophe would follow—no mere disaster, but absolute annihilation! On the coast lands of the Mediterranean a sparse population might still eke out a miserable existence by storing the scanty rainfall, but nowhere else. The very oases of the desert would be dried up, and in a short time the shifting sands of the Sahara would have overlaid the deposits in the river-valley, and buried out of sight even the ruins of the past. The waters of the Nile are, and ever have been, the sole giver of all life in Egypt.

There are two kinds of irrigation in Egypt—basin and perennial irrigation. Basin irrigation is the ancient and historical method of the country. Tradition ascribes its invention to the first King of Egypt, and it is obviously designed to take full advantage of the annual flood. Practically the same as it was 7,000 years ago, it may be seen in Upper Egypt to-day.

The cultivable land from Assouan to the Delta is, with the exception of the Fayoum, that altogether remarkable province, a narrow strip of country, varying in breadth from a few miles to nothing at all, sometimes on both sides of the river, sometimes only on one. Being of deltaic formation, the land is highest near the river, and slopes away towards the desert. As the river flows from south to north, there is, of course, also a general slope of the country in the same direction. Earthen dykes are run at right angles to the river as far as the desert, a dyke parallel to the river and close to its bank connects them, and so a basin is formed, enclosed on the fourth side by the desert. Thus the land is arranged in a series of terraces. Usually these basins are arranged in a series, one basin draining into its neighbour, the last of the series discharging back again into the Nile. Sometimes a second dyke, parallel to the river, divides the lower land near the desert from the higher; sometimes the arrangement is still further complicated by other dykes, making enclosures within the area of the original basin.

The object of the basins is to regulate the supply of the flood-water. Each series of basins has special feeder canals to lead into them. These are shallow, and have their bed about halfway between the high and low level of the Nile. They are therefore dry in the winter and summer, and only run during the flood. The heads of these canals, where they take off from the Nile, remain closed by dams or by masonry regulators till the silt-bearing flood is coming down in sufficient strength. Then about August 10 or 12 the canals are opened and the basins filled. The lowest basins in each series are filled first, then the next lowest, and so on. In a low flood, as in 1877, there is not enough muddy water to go round, and the upper basins get no water at all; such lands are called ‘sharaki,’ and are exempt from taxation. For forty days the flood-water stands on the land, thoroughly soaking it and washing it, and at the same time depositing its fertilizing silt. At the end of that time, through the escape at the lower end of the series, the water is discharged back again into the Nile. But if the flood is a very high one or very slow in abating, the date at which the water can be discharged and the basins dried has to be postponed. Fortunately, this seldom happens; but when it does it has a doubly bad effect. The oversoaking is said to engender worms, and also the ripening of the crops is postponed to an unfavourable season of the year.

Against this particular evil there is no remedy, but since the British occupation a great deal has been done to improve the system of basin irrigation, and prevent a large amount of sharaki even in years of low Nile. These measures consist in arrangements for distributing the ‘red’ water more evenly over the whole system, and not allowing the lower basins only to receive the full benefit, while the higher merely receive ‘white’ water—i.e., water which has already deposited its silt. Further, since any water is better than none, the systems of basins have been so managed, where possible, that the water from an upper system can be drained into a lower one, and thus make up deficiencies, though with water of an inferior quality. More attention has also been paid to the angle at which the feeder canals take off from the Nile, and the slope on which they are laid, so as to provide as much ‘red’ water as possible, while diminishing the amount of silting up. The result of this work is seen in the diminution of the sharaki lands year by year. In 1877 these amounted to nearly 1,000,000 acres, a loss of £1,000,000 in land-tax. During the next ten years the average was 45,000 acres, an annual loss of some £40,000. In 1888 the loss was £300,000, and the Egyptian Government expended £800,000 in remedial works, which have had an extraordinary effect. In 1899, when the Nile was exceptionally low, the sharaki lands amounted to 264,000 acres only, as against nearly 1,000,000 in 1877.

As for the high lands lying immediately between the river and the basin dyke, only eight or nine times in a century does the Nile rise high enough to flood them. They are called ‘berms,’ and are ingeniously irrigated by means of special high-level canals, which, starting from a point above the head of the basin system, or perhaps leading down from an upper system, pass by means of a siphon under the feeder canal. The berms are, of course, also irrigated by lifting water directly from the Nile itself.

There are forty-five systems of basins in Upper Egypt, most of which, and those the largest, are on the left bank. Some of the feeder canals are insignificant, and feed only two or three basins. Others, like the Sohagia Canal, south of Assiout, feed an extensive system, and are real rivers when full. The basins themselves are 5,000 to 15,000 acres in extent, and it can easily be understood that when they are taking in they have an enormous effect in diminishing the pressure of the flood, and, on the other hand, their discharge lengthens it out in the lower reaches of the river, when the level has already fallen very much at Assouan. While the basins are filling in August and September, they absorb about 2,000 cubic metres per second. Besides this, a considerable amount is employed in filling the channel of the Nile itself and its branches. Evaporation, absorption, and direct irrigation, also play their part, and the result is that the discharge of the Nile at Cairo is some 2,500 cubic metres less than it is at Assouan. But during October and November the basins are discharging. The southernmost ones are empty by October 15, those in the neighbourhood of Cairo not till about November 30, or even later. The consequence is that the Nile at Cairo in October is discharging 900 cubic metres per second more than at Assouan, and in November 500 more.

It was the Viceroy Mehemet Ali who revolutionized the methods of Egyptian agriculture, and introduced what is known as perennial irrigation—that is to say, irrigation all the year round, as opposed to irrigation during the flood only. In all the annals of the East there are few more striking figures and few histories more exciting than that of the Albanian tobacco-seller, who, rising high in the favour of Sultan Mahmoud, was sent to Egypt as Viceroy in 1810. Adopting a method well known in Cairo, and well calculated to secure the respect, and even the affection, of Orientals, he consolidated his power by the treacherous murder of the Mamelukes, and thoroughly organized the military resources of his province. Summoned to the aid of the Sultan, his armies bloodily stamped out the successful rising of the Greeks in the Peloponnese, and left to himself he would have settled the question of Greek independence once for all. But his summary proposal to transport the whole Christian population, and repeople the Morea with Mohammedan plantations, provoked the intervention of the Powers, and at Navarino he suffered the complete loss of his fleet. Undismayed, he conceived the idea of making himself master of the Turkish Empire. His armies overran Syria, and easily overcoming the Turkish opposition, he threatened Constantinople itself. Once more, if left to himself, he would have succeeded in his object, but once more the slow processes of European diplomacy at last resulted in action. British guns gave the death-blow to his hopes at Acre, and Turkey was saved from her ambitious vassal, though Egypt remained a practically independent State, and her sovereignty became the hereditary appanage of the house of Mehemet.

In the region of domestic policy this strange combination of barbarism and genius proved that he retained the commercial instincts of the tobacco-seller as well as the far-reaching ideas and the drastic methods of the despot. He perceived the advantages which would accrue from the cultivation of cotton and the sugar-cane, hitherto unknown in Egypt. These crops are impossible under a system of basin irrigation; for though they require to be watered all through the summer, they would be ruined by complete inundation, and the shallow flood canals are well above the summer level of the river. But difficulties were nothing to Mehemet Ali. The corvée was called out, and the unfortunate fellaheen were set to work to dig new canals and reconstruct the existing water-ways in the Delta, so as to render them capable of conveying water during the period of low Nile. At the same time the dykes along the banks of the Nile and the canals were very much strengthened, so as to keep out the flood; the old basin dykes were obliterated, and arrangements made for irrigating the land from the new canals.

Of course, perennial irrigation in itself had always existed in Egypt. It would have been indeed strange if the principle applied by anybody who daily waters a window-box had not occurred to the Egyptians. The Nile berms were often enclosed to protect them from inundation, and watered directly from the river all the year round, while within the basins themselves considerable tracts were irrigated from wells. But never before had special canals been provided by Government for perennial irrigation. The advantages of perennial irrigation are that crops like cotton and sugar can be grown, which would otherwise be impossible, and that two, or even three crops, can be produced in a year, instead of only one. The land is therefore increased in value, but, on the other hand, there are serious objections. First of all, the land is deprived of the full benefit derived from the annual renewal of the soil by the silt deposit. Agriculture becomes a much more intricate and difficult process; the exhausted soil has to be constantly refreshed and stimulated by dressings and manures. The basin irrigator makes less profits, but he has less risk and less anxiety; he can only ride a donkey, while the perennial irrigator can ride a horse. But behind the horseman sits black Care. A low summer supply means to him the waste of many weeks’ labour and much expenditure in preparing and sowing his fields; the basin irrigator does nothing till the flood is over, and should the inundation not cover a part of his land, it merely means that that part lies fallow for another year, and suffers no deterioration. A breach in the dykes during the flood is inconvenient to the one, no doubt, but fatal to the other, for it means the ruin of his growing cotton or sugar. And under perennial irrigation it is much more likely to occur, for the basins act as a safety-valve in the inundation, and, while they lengthen out the period of the flood in Lower Egypt, enormously decrease its volume at any given time; but when the same lands are receiving only an occasional watering, the volume that rushes to the sea is by so much the greater, and the pressure on the dykes is heavily increased.

If Mehemet Ali had been content to preserve the old basin dykes, the vivifying effects of the flood-water might have been occasionally applied, and some of these dangers averted. But, as we have seen, everything had to give way to the immediate cultivation of cotton, and the dykes were levelled. Nor was this the only error committed. The new canals were faulty in slope and alignment. Too often their subsidiaries were constructed merely with the object of carrying water to the lands of powerful and favoured individuals, without regard to the general interest. It was found in consequence that an enormous silting up of the canals took place every year. But the Viceroy, with all the forced labour of Egypt at his free disposal, took little heed of this, and vast numbers of men were dragged from their homes every year to redig the canals. Even so it was impossible for the task to be completed before the next flood came round. The lower reaches of the canals remained choked with mud and weeds, and, worst of all, proper drainage was neglected.

When Napoleon was in Egypt in 1798, his master mind, accustomed to go to the root of many matters in spite of all the alarms and distractions of war, perceived how much might be done by a regulation of the water at the point of the Delta. His idea was to close each branch of the river alternately during the flood, and so double its effect. Mehemet Ali proposed to apply the same principle to low-water, and began to close the head of the Rosetta or left-hand branch of the Nile with an enormous stone dam, so as to divert the whole supply into the Damietta branch. Linant Pasha, then chief of the French engineers, who had been brought over to advise upon the new works, persuaded him to abandon this design, and proposed instead to build a barrage upon each branch, constructing them in the dry, and then diverting the Nile into its new course by means of earthen dams. The Viceroy approved, and at once proposed, with characteristic energy, to dismantle the Pyramids and make use of their material, just as Sultan Hasan had once stripped the marble casing from the Great Pyramid to construct his famous mosque. Fortunately, the prosaic question of transport arrested this design, and new limestone quarries were opened near Cairo instead. But although workshops were built, material collected, and foundations dug, Mehemet seems to have lost all interest in the work, and in 1835 he abandoned it altogether, and for seven years nothing more was heard of it.

Two things appear to have operated in his mind. It seemed simpler to keep on digging out the main canals by the help of the corvée, and cheaper, too, because nothing was wanted but the unpaid labour, though it was false economy. And, secondly, his ill-regulated but far-reaching imagination was already busy upon a new idea, nothing less than the construction of a great reservoir, which should store up the surplus water of the winter and let it out again in the summer, thereby, as he supposed, rendering unnecessary the construction of any minor work like a barrage.

Surely there can be no more curious instance of the irony of fate than the history of these two great ideas—the Barrage and the Reservoir. Both in turn have been carried into successful execution by engineers and statesmen belonging to the very nation which shattered the ambitions of their first authors. Against the crumbling walls of Acre, held so stoutly for weeks by the English sea-captain, when even the notion of a day’s defence seemed a madness, Napoleon’s dreams of Eastern empire dashed themselves vainly to pieces. Forty years later the same walls could not withstand for half a day the guns of their former defenders, and Mehemet Ali in turn saw his own imperial dreams finally dissolve. Mehemet neglected the Barrage, because he thought the Reservoir would make it unnecessary; and yet in the end it was only the successful working of the Barrage which gave new life to the project of the Reservoir, and made its completion an absolute necessity.

The Viceroy, perhaps, deserves little credit for his idea. In matters of irrigation it is often much easier to see what to do than how to do it; like other great men, he imagined better than he knew. Undoubtedly he was fascinated by the fame of King Amenemhat of the Twelfth Dynasty, and his construction of Lake Mœris in the Fayoum. He constructed a new regulator at the spot where the Bahr Yusuf enters that extraordinary province, and even built himself a house there. But whether because of the inherent difficulties of the subject, or because of foreign complications, nothing was done until in 1842 his mind reverted to the idea of the Barrage at the point of the Delta. The Frenchman Mougel had the address to couple his design with a scheme of military fortifications, and, attracted by this double advantage, Mehemet at once ordered the works to be begun, though, unfortunately, his energy was more devoted to making the point of the Delta the military capital of Egypt than towards the regulation of the water. By this time, however, Mehemet Ali’s career was drawing to a close, and in 1848 he died, leaving the work in which he never more than half believed still unfinished.

It is difficult to conceive anything more humiliating and exasperating than the position of the French engineers who acted as advisers to the Egyptian Government. Time has vindicated their reputation, and proved the excellence of their designs and the soundness of their work; but in their own day they had to suffer disappointment, and even disgrace, and to bear the brunt of failure, due not to themselves, but to the conditions under which they lived. With no authority to enforce the execution of their plans, hampered at every turn, sometimes by the incompetence, and always by the unwillingness, of the Arab engineers through whom they had to work, supported only occasionally by the uncertain breeze of viceregal caprice, they struggled bravely on, and deserve the greatest credit for what they did manage to accomplish. In 1853 Abbas Pasha, the then Viceroy, dismissed Mougel from his service, to mark his displeasure at the slowness of the building, and appointed a new man. Little was gained by the change. The Barrages were nominally finished in 1863, and an attempt was made to close the gates on the Rosetta branch. But a settlement took place, and they had to be immediately reopened. Not till 1872 was the Barrage really used, and then only partially on the Rosetta branch, and not at all on the Damietta. Still, whereas before 1872 only 250,000 acres of summer crops had been matured in the Delta, and that at the cost of enormous labour in clearing the canals, afterwards the total was 600,000 acres, and the cost of maintenance was very much less. The ordinary summer supply available for the Delta canals was increased from 64 cubic metres per second to 150.

This success brought home to the mind of the then reigning Khedive, Ismail, the advantages of perennial irrigation and the cultivation of cotton, and he determined to extend the system to Upper Egypt and the Fayoum, where he possessed huge estates, amassed by fair means and foul through the agency of the notorious Mufettish, Said. Accordingly, in 1873 the great Ibrahimiyah Canal was dug. Starting from near Assiout, it runs for 268 kilometres nearly parallel to the Nile on its left bank, and supplies perennial irrigation to 252,000 acres in the provinces of Assiout, Minia, and Beni-Suêf. It also carries flood-water to a series of basins lying to the west of it, nearer the desert. Before 1873 the Bahr Yusuf, which feeds the Fayoum, took its water direct from the Nile, but its head was now transferred to the left bank of the Ibrahimiyah Canal at Dêrut, and 327,000 acres in the Fayoum came nominally under perennial irrigation.

It would perhaps have been more reasonable to perfect the irrigation system of Lower Egypt, and to complete the Barrages entirely, before embarking on new projects in Upper Egypt. But the temptation to improve his own lands by simply calling out the corvée to dig canals was too strong for Ismail; and, indeed, he was not the man to devote himself to the carrying out of old projects to the exclusion of new ones. In him the vigorous and practical originality of his grandfather Mehemet appeared in the form of a fantastic imagination running riot in all directions, unrestrained by the prosaic considerations of time and means. Yet with able Ministers he might have been one of the greatest of rulers. In spite of all the degradation which his reckless extravagance brought on Egypt, the country owes him something; for there was generally something great in his ideas, and time is carrying many of them into effect. It is impossible not to feel some admiration for the man who, when asked what gauge the Soudan railway should be, replied, ‘Make it the same as that of the railways in South Africa. It will save trouble in the end.’

It has already been explained that on the Nile berms or high banks, which are covered by the flood only once in six or seven years, on islands in the river, and on selected tracts within the basins in the neighbourhood of wells, it has been the immemorial custom to lift water on to the fields. Everywhere the two primitive instruments of ancient Egypt are in common use to-day—the shadoof and the sakieh. The shadoof is a long pole balanced on a support. From one end of it is suspended a bucket, and from the other a heavy counterpoise, equal in weight to the bucket when full of water. The bucket is made of various materials, very often leather, though the ordinary kerosene-oil tin of commerce is making its presence felt here as elsewhere. The shadoof is worked by hand. The bucket is pulled down into the water, then lifted up by the help of the counterpoise, and its contents are tipped over into the channel leading to the cultivated land, where the water is steered by means of miniature canals and dams into the required direction. I suppose there could not be a simpler form of unskilled labour than working the shadoof. Whenever I think of the fellah of Upper Egypt, I think of the shadoof. Up and down, creak and splash, hour after hour, day after day, he goes on lifting and tilting, with an amazing and monotonous regularity. Nothing disturbs him—not even a steamer grounded on a sand-bank twenty yards in front of him. As he stands, naked except for a loin-cloth of blue cotton, with his absolutely dull, impassive features, his magnificent chest and arms but weak legs, you cannot help wondering which came first, the shadoof or the shadoof-man, so perfectly are they adapted to each other. Two piastres are the humble guerdon of the long day’s labour. You can calculate upon the fellah as you could on a machine. But, in spite of it all, deep down in his soul lies the sentiment which redeems him and distinguishes him from a mere machine—his absorbing love for the soil. Take him away, set him to other tasks—to serve, for instance, in the army—he will perform his duties with the same unfaltering regularity and docility; but all the time he is thinking in his heart of the black soil and the water of Egypt. In Omdurman I asked a more than usually intelligent Egyptian soldier, who had been told off to perform some small services for me, ‘Do you like being in the army?’ Without hesitation came the answer, ‘No.’ ‘What do you want to do?’ ‘I wish to be at home,’ he said, ‘and cultivate the ground.’

With a single shadoof water can be lifted 2½ metres; but when the bank is high a second or third tier of shadoofs is employed, and in some places as many as five shadoofs may be seen lifting the water from one level to another, till it reaches the fields. One man working twelve hours a day can lift enough water to irrigate an acre of cotton or corn in ten days.

The sakieh, or Persian water-wheel, consists of a vertical wheel with a string of buckets attached to it, which, as the wheel turns round, are let down into the water, come up full, and discharge their contents into a channel as they come to the top. The wheel is turned by means of spokes, which catch in a horizontal wheel worked by oxen, buffaloes, or some other beast of burden. If the lift is high, the string of buckets may be very long; but if the wheel itself dips into the water, there may be no string at all, and it is then called a taboot. The buckets are often earthenware pitchers, and the wheels themselves are generally of the rudest construction, and made of palm wood; but new and improved iron water-wheels are coming into use. Still, whether of iron or of wood, they all seem to make the same peculiar sing-song whine. There is no sound more characteristic of Egypt. It has a peculiar penetration. Night and day it continues. I believe Egyptian music is founded upon it. The fellaheen say the cattle will not work unless they hear it. Certainly when one stops, the other stops also.

In the Fayoum, where, owing to the difference in the levels, the canals have often a very high velocity, there are very ingenious water-wheels or turbines, which play the part of sakiehs, but are turned by the force of the current; the water thus lifts itself continuously.

Where the lift is very little, shadoofs and sakiehs are replaced by instruments called Natalis and Archimedean screws; but, naturally, since the introduction of perennial irrigation has so increased the area to be watered by lift, machinery has had to be called in, and most of the work is done by pumps worked by steam. Each large land-owner has his own pump and engine, which can be moved from place to place, and are also hired out to the smaller men. On very large estates stationary engines have been erected, which, of course, are able to raise a much larger amount of water; but as a rule the machinery employed is a portable eight-horse-power engine and an eight-inch centrifugal pump.

How different is all this from the lot of the agriculturist in other lands! For him there is no digging or maintenance of canals; no apparatus of regulators, dams, sluice-gates, siphons, and drains; no painful lifting of the water by pumps and engines, shadoofs, and sakiehs. The rain falls upon his fields from heaven without any effort of his. He looks to Providence to regulate his supply; the Egyptian looks to a Government department. But the Egyptian, as a compensation for his extra labour, has the advantage of greater certainty. He knows the sun will shine. The rise and fall of the Nile, variable as it is, can be foretold with greater exactness than that of any other river—with far greater exactness than the duration of the rainy season in any country in the world. Nature indeed made his task simple in the extreme, if he had been content with one crop a year. Every year the flood thoroughly washed the land, and kept it free from injurious salts; it also covered them with a deposit of mud, which relieved him from the necessity of dressing and manuring the exhausted soil. The Nile silt, though singularly rich in potash, the principal food of leguminous plants, like peas, beans, and clover, is, however, very poor in the nitrates on which cereals depend. But the Egyptian clover, called bersine, has the property of secreting nitrates from the air, and depositing them in the soil to an extraordinary extent, so that the land was able to bear crops of clover and cereals in rotation to an unlimited extent without any manuring. The desire to grow rich by crops like cotton and sugar, and by forcing the land to double its output, has changed all this. Not only has the summer supply of water become of the utmost importance, but the soil has to be constantly refreshed with manures. The question of manures is, indeed, only second, under perennial irrigation, to the question of water.

Wherever cattle and stock are numerous, farmyard manure is used, as well as the guano from the immense colonies of pigeons, kept for the purpose in specially built pigeon-lofts throughout Egypt. Between Halfa and Kena there are inexhaustive supplies of nitrates in the desert, and north of Kena the mounds which mark the sites of ancient cities, like Abydos, Ashmunên, Medinet, and the rest, serve the same purpose. The ruins of the past are thus valued by the agriculturist not less than by the archæologist, perhaps even more so; for lands in proximity to them are rented higher in consequence. Year by year more attention is now paid to the dressing of the soil, as perennial irrigation is more understood and more studied; besides the natural resources of the country, an increasing amount of manures is imported from abroad, and there is little doubt that the growing tendency in this direction will continue.

But all preparation of the soil is worse than useless labour unless the necessary amount of water can be provided. This amount varies both with the nature of the crop, the season of the year, and the position of the land. The critical time is, of course, the summer, when the supply of water is least and the heat is greatest, and, of course, in Upper Egypt, where the sun is strongest, and the loss by evaporation consequently greater, the demand is more urgent than in the Delta.

The total amount of cultivable land in Egypt is 6,250,000 acres. Before the completion of the new works, to which period all the figures in this chapter refer, the total nominally under cultivation was about 5,750,000 acres. Of this, Upper Egypt claimed 2,320,000—viz., 587,000 nominally under perennial irrigation, and 1,732,000, including 1,435,000 under basin irrigation every year, and 297,000 of Nile berms, which are only flooded once in six or seven years, and at other times irrigated directly from the Nile by means of shadoofs and water-wheels. Of the whole of this area only about 20 to 30 per cent. produce double crops in the year; for the amount of perennial irrigation is but small, and, although the whole of the Fayoum—329,000 acres—was supposed to be perennially irrigated, so faulty was the water-supply that the summer crops were only about 30 per cent. of the whole, instead of 50 per cent., which is the rule in the Delta. It seems, indeed, as though matters had been arranged expressly for the benefit of the tourist; it is Upper Egypt in the winter season that he goes to see, and it is then that the fields are green with corn, clover, and other crops. The following table shows the different crops, and the acreage devoted to them at the different seasons in Upper Egypt:

In Lower Egypt, or the Delta, the total area of fully or partly cultivated land is 3,430,000 acres, and there are still 500,000 acres of totally unreclaimed land. All this is under perennial irrigation; half of it is under summer crops every year, and 40 per cent. produces two crops a year. The following is a similar table to that given for Upper Egypt:

Lower Egypt.

Even if we look only to the summer acreage under crops, it is obvious that the water-supply in the summer is very important; but when we look to the value of the crop it becomes much more striking. Far the most valuable crop in Egypt is the cotton, which is the principal item in the summer. In Upper Egypt the value of a summer crop is, on the average, more than twice that of a winter crop per acre, and in the Delta the proportion is nearly the same. And though the value of the flood crops is increased by the date-palms, of which there are 5,700,000 paying taxes in Egypt, and whose produce is gathered at this season, it cannot be compared with the summer crops. Sugar-cane is now but little grown in the Delta, and even in Upper Egypt its acreage is rather less than that of cotton.

Valuable as are the cotton-plant and the sugar-cane, it must never be forgotten that one of the humbler winter crops, though valued much lower in point of money, is yet the foundation of well-being in the others—I mean the Egyptian clover, or bersine, the friend of beast and man alike. Long before I knew its remarkable properties, I admired it for its beauty. Green and glossy, it covers acre upon acre with a luxuriant carpet, in pleasing contrast both to the black soil and the desert sand, and most refreshing and comforting to the eye. A bundle of it will satisfy even the grumbling camel; even the melancholy buffalo looks a shade less depressed when her turn comes to be tethered in it for her meal. Sheep and donkeys can hardly eat it down fast enough within the circle of their ropes before it has grown up again. And all the time it is steadily collecting in the soil the invaluable globules of nitrate, which will put new life into the succeeding cotton or corn. The part it plays in preparing the soil can be estimated by the rotations of crops followed by the Egyptian cultivator. These are as follows:

On Rich Soils.

On Poor Soils.

Rice and barley have their place, because they are less affected by the injurious salts, which are the great enemies of the soil’s fertility.

In Lower Egypt cotton is sown from the end of February to the beginning of April. The land is well watered before it is ploughed for the seed, and again when the seed is sown. From then until the beginning of the flood it is watered on the average about once in twenty days. The harvest lasts from August 20 to November 10, and the cotton is picked two or three times over. During this time the crop is watered about once in every fifteen days, but as the water is now abundant there is nothing to fear. Indian corn is sown from July 5 to August 30, and October 15 to November 30 is the period of harvest. It is irrigated at the time of sowing, twenty days after, and then once in ten or twelve days. The first two of these waterings are, of course, the important ones. The earlier it is sown, the better the crop will be, because it will have better weather for maturing; but if the flood is late, and consequently the water-supply is low, the Government may have to resort to a system of rotations in sending water down the canals, and then the Indian corn crop may be sacrificed to the interests of the cotton. Rice is the wettest of all the crops; the kind (called ‘sultâni’) sown in May and reaped in November is watered once in ten days before the flood, but during the flood is given as much water as the drains can carry off. The other kind (called ‘sabaini’) is sown in August, and also reaped in November. Both in Lower and Upper Egypt it is purely a flood crop, and takes all the water it can get. The winter crops, wheat, beans, barley, and clover, are sown in November and December. Wheat and beans are irrigated twice, barley once, but clover goes on growing up till June, and takes more water according to the number of crops, sometimes three or four, that are taken off it.

In Upper Egypt cotton-sowing begins at the same time, but the harvest is earlier. Sugar-cane is sown in March, and the canes are cut from December 15 to March 15. Sometimes the same roots are left in the ground, and produce another crop in the second year; but this is never of such quality as the first, and the land has probably to be left fallow after it. Sugar, therefore, though nominally more valuable than cotton per acre, is more costly in the long-run. It is watered every twelve or fifteen days. The other crops are the summer and flood sorghum, grown on the berms or in tracts within the basins, and irrigated by shadoofs and water-wheels about once every ten days; and the wheat, beans, clover, and barley, in the basins. The cereals are usually not watered at all, but the clover follows the same course as in Lower Egypt.

Summing up these results, we find that the principal crops in Lower Egypt are cotton and rice. The cotton needs irrigation about once in twenty days, the rice once in ten days. To provide this amount of water, a canal should discharge (after allowance has been made for wastage) 22 cubic metres in twenty-four hours per acre of cotton, and 40 cubic metres per acre of rice. That is to say, 1 cubic metre per second will suffice for 4,000 acres of cotton and 2,150 acres of rice. In Upper Egypt rice is only a flood crop, and cotton and sugar need about 25 to 30 per cent. more water than in the Delta, owing to the greater loss from evaporation—that is to say, 1 cubic metre per second will only suffice for 3,000 acres of cotton or sugar. During the winter the land throughout Egypt requires on the average a watering once in forty days. But, as we have seen, it is the summer supply for the cotton that is the really important thing. We shall see later what the effect of the reservoir is likely to be in safeguarding and extending these interests.