IG NOTES ON EGYPTIAN AGRICULTURE. 



trade assumes considerable jiroportions. Beans are extremel}^^ luxu- 

 riant, and they produce on an average 35 or 40 bushels per acre on 

 good land. 



It is quite unnecessaiy to state that the cultivation of basin lands 

 is extremely primitive. The seed is merely broadcasted on the silt 

 left by the Nile, covered in by hand-hoeing or scraping, and left until 

 harvest time. The cost of sowing does not exceed 40 cents per acre. 

 Harvest is in the spring, and the land is then generally left bare for 

 the few months which elapse until the Nile again rises, when, in jjlace 

 of fields of waving corn, we have, as it were, inland lakes of red silt- 

 laden water. Though the net return jDer acre from basin irrigated 

 lands is not as great as on perennially irrigated lands, yet t\\ey return 

 to the cultivator a large margin of profit, as the cost of cultivation 

 is reduced to an absolute minimum. 



Upper Egypt is thickly poiiulated, in some provinces amounting to 

 as many as two persons per acre. This has led to the cultivation of 

 some of the basin lands during the interval which elai)ses between 

 the removal of the ordinary winter crop and the arrival of the Nile 

 flood. Such crops have to be irrigated, and this is usually accom- 

 plished l>y means of primitive water wheels lifting the water as much 

 as 15 or 20 feet. This cultivation is generally carried on where a sup- 

 ply of manure is availal)le, an application of which is imperative. 

 The soil is capable of raising only the ordinary winter crop without 

 manure, and the summer croj?, which is generally millet, is heavily 

 fertilized. Scattered throughout the country and in use throughout 

 the whole of Egypt are large mounds, sites of antiquity, which are 

 drawn upon to supply manure to grow these summer crops. They 

 contain a nitrogen equivalent of about -2 or 3 per cent of nitrate of 

 soda. As would naturall}^ be expected, however, the best supplies 

 are being exhausted, and many of the poorer ones which remain 

 scarcely pay for transport. The summer crop, when grown in the 

 basins by irrigation, is therefore practically always manured, and 

 this, together with the watering, entails a considerable outlay on the 

 part of the cultivator, though a good margin of profit remains. In 

 some districts corn is grown on basin land which, lying high or being 

 protected by small embankments, does not become inundated until 

 later in the seasoii, when the crop has become sufficiently advanced 

 to stand a certain amount of flooding. It may be mentioned that in 

 the southern provinces, where the basin land is poor, it is often found 

 more profitable to irrigate the winter evop of wheat and barlej^ instead 

 of trusting to the moisture in the soil after the flood. In this case 

 the crop is always manured. 



Such, then, is an outline of the system of agriculture jiracticed in 

 the basins of Upper Egypt, and some idea of its primitive nature 

 can thus be obtained. Nearly 1,750,000 acres of land are under this 

 system of irrigation, a system which will now, to a great extent, 



