438 lEEIGATIOlSr IN EGYPT. 



The cultivable area of Egypt, or the space between desert and 

 desert where cultivation would be possible, is now estimated at 

 ten thousand square statute miles.* Much of the surface, though 

 not out of the reach of irrigation, lies too high to be economically 

 watered, and irrigation and cultivation are therefore at present 

 confined to an area of seven thousand square miles, nearly the 

 whole of which is regularly and constantly watered when not cov- 

 ered by the inundation, except in the short interval between the 

 harvest and the rise of the waters. For nearly half of the year, 

 then, irrigation adds seven thousand square miles to the humid 

 surface of the Nile valley, or, in other words, more than decuples 

 the area from which an appreciable quantity of moisture would 

 otherwise be evaporated ; for after the Nile has retired within its 

 banks, its waters by no means cover one-tenth of the space just 

 mentioned. 



The Nile receives not a single tributary in its course below 

 Khartoum ; there is not so much as one living spring in the 

 whole land,t ^iid, with the exception of a narrow strip of coast, 

 where the annual precipitation is said to amount to six inches, 



some of them by boats of large tonnage, and the canals return a net revenue 

 of from five to twenty per cent, on their cost. 



* The area which the waters of the Nile, left to themselves, would now 

 cover is greater than it would have been in ancient times, because the bed of 

 the river has been elevated, and consequently the lateral spread of the inun- 

 dation increased. See Smith's Dictionary of Geography, article " ^Egyptus." 

 But the industry of the Egyptians in the days of the Pharaohs and the Ptole- 

 mies carried the Nile-water to large provinces, which have now been long 

 abandoned and have relapsed into the condition of desert. "Anciently," 

 observes the writer of the article " Egypt " in Smith's Dictionary of the Bible, 

 " 2,735 square miles more [about 3,700 square statute miles] may have been 

 cultivated. In the best days of Egypt, probably all the land was cultivated 

 that could be made available for agricultural purposes, and hence we may es- 

 timate the ancient arable area of that country at not less than 11,000 square 

 statute miles, or fully double its present extent." 



According to an article in the Bollettino della Societd Oeografka Italiana, 

 vol. v., pt. iii., p. 219, the cultivated soil of Egypt in 1869 amounted to 

 4,500,000 acres, and the remaining soil capable of cultivation was estimated 

 at 2,000,000 acres. The extent of cultivation in Egypt is fast increasing. The 

 tilled soil amounted to 4,744,298 acres in 1873. The increase since 1812 is 

 stated at 1,500,000 acres. 



f The so-called spring at Heliopolis is only a thread of water infiltrated from 

 the Nile or the canals. 



