4 



COTTON IN EGYPT AND THE SUDAN. 



51 



Further south, between Assiut and Assuan, is Upper Egypt, and 

 here the alluvial soil is less fertile and less extended, the summer is 

 considerably hotter, and the kinds of cotton which are culti- 

 vated here are somewhat lower in quality, and must be as carefully 

 selected as the time at which the sowing has to take place. The 

 three provinces of Upper Egypt had the following area under cotton 

 cultivation : 



Feddans. 



In Central and Upper Egypt, just as in the Delta, an extension 

 of the cotton cultivation will go hand in hand with the enlargement 

 of the modern irrigation works, and already 25 per cent, of the 

 culturable land in Egypt are under cotton cultivation ; those soils 

 which are able to grow cotton are planted every year to the extent 

 of a third or half with cotton. 



Formerly, the agricultural motto was : Lower Egypt for cotton, 

 Upper Egypt for sugar cane, but latterly the cotton plant is pene- 

 trating year by year successfully more into the south, and in the 

 provinces of Giseh, Fayum, Beni Suef, and Minieh, the cotton area 

 is increasing annually. 



In proportion to the whole area, the development of cotton has 

 progressed in the last few years as follows : 



Still further south of Assuan, in Nubia which lies in the 

 hot regions between the first and second cataract, and the adminis- 

 tration of which still belongs to Egypt, the Nile Valley is consider- 

 ably narrower than in Upper Egypt, and the cultivable land reaches 

 seldom further inward than a couple of hundred metres from the 

 river; frequently it is only a few yards wide, and often rocks and 

 sandy desert come right up to the Nile. Only inferior kinds of cotton 

 grow here in summer and in winter, but the better kinds can only be 

 cultivated in summer, and the sowing must be undertaken towards 

 the end of May to the middle of June. 



The further one goes towards the south, into the Sudan, the 

 more important are the changes of the climate for cotton cultivation. 

 In the district north of the city of Khartoum the winter is still too cold 

 for the cultivation of superior kinds of cotton, but as soon as we go 

 southward we get into districts where the summer is no hotter than 

 the north of Khartoum, but the winter is considerably warmer than 



