15 



king, Amenemhet III, the great builder and the reformer of the practice 

 of irrigation in Eg^'pt. It seems that the famous monument to him 

 was planned so that it should be a permanent witness of the career of 

 the fellah and of the progress of irrigation. 



The fellah, although he has been ruled by one foreign power after 

 another, has been almost as unchanging as his surroundings. Whether 

 from lack of ingenuity or because he is satisfied with the appliances 

 of his forefathers, the EgA'ptian makes very little progress in the con- 

 struction or use of agricultural or scientific instruments. The writers 

 of the hierogh'phs on the temples constructed four thousand or five 

 thousand 3'ears ago might have received their inspiration from scenes in 

 the fields to-da}". The fellah plows his ground with a wooden plow or 

 stirs it with a hoe or with a more primitive wooden implement. (PI. 

 11.) He cultivates the growing crops with a hoe and harvests them with 

 a sickle or pulls the stalks from the ground b\' hand. The grain is 

 either beaten out with a flail or trodden and chopped out by means of a 

 wooden sledge furnished with rollers carr^'ing disks and drawn ])y oxen. 

 Egyptian agricultural methods would not look so much out of place 

 were it not that at the present time considerable areas are owned by 

 foreignei's who have adopted modern methods. An improved thrash- 

 ing machine may be at work in a field adjoining a plat where a native 

 farmer is wearing out the straw in thrashing the grain b}' a primitive 

 method which antedates bil)lical times. It is not uncommon to see a 

 steam plow and one pulled by a camel and a bufi'alo working in adjoin- 

 ing fields. An immense modern steam pumping plant mav be operated 

 alongside a shaduf or a sakiyeh, and the native when interviewed will 

 point with pride to the superior machine he employs. 



After visiting the great barrage below Cairo and noting how the 

 structure is maintained by the government, how it serxes as a bridge 

 across the Nile as well as a diversion work, how well the uavioation 

 interests of the Nile and the large canals have been conserved, and 

 how beautifull}' the grounds of the southern extremity of the delta in 

 the vicinity of the dam have been laid out in parks, the writer made 

 arrangements to visit the Fayum province at the extremity of the Bahr 

 Yusef Canal (the water of Joseph), some 75 miles southwest of Cairo. 

 The province can best be reached by rail, going from Cairo 40 miles 

 up the river to Wasta and there changing cars for the capital city, 

 Medinet el Fa3^um. The morning fixed upon for the trip happened 

 to be foggy and cold for Egypt. But little could be seen except the 

 country lying near the railroad. Sugar cane, date-palm trees, and 

 wheat fields abound and occasionally fields of clover and beans could 

 be identified. After leaving Wasta it requires a run of only a few 

 nimutes to reach the margin of the cultivated lands. Soon the desert 

 was entered and no sign of vegetation could be seen. Along the mar- 

 gin of the valley the hills })reak oft' abruptly and the country is rather 



