1891.] PUBLIC DOCUMENT — No. 4. 169 



added that God was great, and kept many things unrevealed, 

 to which I assented. 



I asked him about his taxes. He differed from the 

 American farmer, in that he knew what they were, and 

 when they hit him. He paid tax when he bought salt, in 

 its increased price, and on tobacco, if he used it ; for the 

 rest, his land being of the best, and well situated for over- 

 flow and irrigation, he was rated at the top, and paid twelve 

 dollars an acre in money. He complained bitterly of the 

 tax ; I told him that God was great, and there was much 

 that was not revealed ; but, humanly speaking, in view of 

 the productiveness of his land, his tax was not high. The 

 only trouble he had was in not owning more land. He 

 asked me about the taxes in my country. I told him that 

 the taxes in my country were upon spirits and tobacco, and 

 what was not produced by that tax was so arranged as to 

 fall upon farmers and laborers. I did not add that the 

 government of my country also gave the right to tax farmers 

 and laborers, to a small body of individuals and corporations, 

 under the pretence of enabling them to pay extra wages to 

 some three per cent of the population, and left it in their 

 hands to carry out the agreement, because I was not anxious 

 for his comments on such political economy, and did not 

 wish to disturb his opinion that I belonged to a superior race. 



The Egyptian does good work with his wooden instru- 

 ment, the " sacred plough," which in ages long ago employed 

 "the kings and awful fathers of mankind;" it breaks up 

 the black soil, he harrows it with a spiked roller or a V 

 harrow of primitive pattern, and broadcasts his grain, grass 

 or clover. Beans he puts in hills or drills, according to his 

 fancy. Peas, lentils, vetches, etc., seem to be scattered in 

 patches. Onions are carefully planted in beds, and yield 

 enormously the finest of their kinds ; other vegetables grow 

 in abundance and with great delicacy of flavor ; in eating 

 them one cannot help sympathizing with the Israelites of the 

 wilderness, who mourned for the flesh-pots of Egypt, and 

 sighed for the good living of bondage. " We remember the 

 fish that we did eat in Egypt, the cucumbers and the melons, 

 the leeks and the onions and the garlic." 



The first tax the farmer has to meet is the swarms of 



