12 COTTON IN EGYPT AND THE SUDAN. 



no more known as the " corn bin " of the world, is the third greatest 

 producer of raw material, supplying one of the most important indus- 

 tries of the world with one of the best kinds of cotton. Egypt is 

 almost the sole producer in the world of the finest kinds of cotton, 

 and the world looks to Egypt for this supply. For Egypt herself the 

 question of cotton growing is of vital importance. In the districts 

 where cotton will grow at all, the cotton area usually takes up on an 

 average one-third or one-half of the whole arable land, and provides 

 the farmer with the most important ready-money crop, whose worth 

 in one year reaches from ,25, 000, 000 to 30,000,000. Cotton and 

 cotton seed form 90 per cent, of all the exports of Egypt. Certainly 

 this extension of cotton cultivation is partly at the cost of other culti- 

 vations, so that Egypt, an agricultural land par excellence, must go 

 to foreign countries for the supply of her foodstuffs. 



We will now first consider shortly the chief foundations of Egyp- 

 tian agriculture generally. 



THE CULTIVATED LAND AND ITS POPULATION. 



When we speak of the agricultural worth of Egypt, we must 

 remember that the country, which on the map may seem large (it 

 has 994,300 square kilometres, or nearly double the area of the 

 German .Empire), is in reality a huge desert, covered with rock and 

 sand, that the rainfall is not worth speaking of, and that consequently 

 the land depends entirely upon the possibilities of irrigation. The 

 Nile has been from times immemorial the real vein of life; without 

 its regular floods, which inundate the arable land and at the same 

 time water and manure it, the whole of Egypt would only be a vast 

 desert. The Nile Valley is forming in the most barren 

 part of the desert a small arable strip of land, which might 

 form a convenient approach to the interior of Africa, if the river 

 were not in places confined, in it middle course, by narrow walls of 

 rocks, causing even the green banks to disappear partially, the Nile 

 to run over obstacles in cataracts and rapids. In earlier times that 

 part of Egypt which is inhabited up to the first cataract formed a 

 long gulf, beginning at the Mediterranean Sea, in the shape of a 

 shallow funnel, which has gradually been filled up by silt from the 

 Nile. These deposits have been made in such a manner that the Nile 

 has built through its deposits of silt in the middle of the Delta a dam, 

 on which it has made its channel. The plains of the valley, which 

 run parallel with the course of the Nile, are at a deeper level than 

 the river, and thus allow a convenient method of irrigation at flood 

 time. 



This arable strip of land is in the lower Nile Valley, south of 

 Cairo, no more than 30 kilometres wide, and in L T pper Egypt seldom 

 more than 7 kilometres. The total arable land extends in length only 

 to 900 kilometres from Cairo to Assuan, and forms a cultivable area 

 of 12,660 square kilometres. This part of Upper Egypt is called 

 " Said," which means upper land. Only a single valley extends to 

 the west to the district of Fayoum, which is supplied with water 

 by the Joseph's Canal. In olden times this part was highly culti- 

 vated, and it is again being revived. This valley contains 1,380 

 square kilometres of arable land. Twenty-two kilometres below Cairo 

 the Delta or Lower Egypt commences ; in the Egyptian language it 



