METHODS OP APPLYING WATER. 203 



In places where there is a scarcity of water the men 

 and women carry, suspended from a yoke across their 

 shoulders, two large buckets with long spouts, and 

 sprinkle rows of vegetables copiously. Sometimes 

 the water for this purpose is carried in buckets a con- 

 siderable distance. Liquid manure is applied in the 

 same way. 



The irrigation of Egypt is now conduc5led on a sci- 

 entific basis. The whole country is cut up into canals, 

 and there are immense irrigating works in the delta 

 which, during the inundations of the Nile, require hun- 

 dreds of thousands of men to manage them. An im- 

 mense dam extends across the Nile near Cairo, which 

 raises its waters into a vast canal through which they 

 are allowed to flow out into subordinate canals over the 

 great delta. There are some steam-pumps used in 

 Egyptian irrigation, but by far the greater part of the 

 country is irrigated now as it was in the days of the 

 Pharaohs. This is by means of the shadoof and sak- 

 iyeh. All over Egypt may be seen men naked to the 

 waist standing knee-deep in water with a basket-work 

 bucket hung by ropes between them. With a swing- 

 ing motion they scoop the water from the river into this 

 bucket and swing it up to a canal on a higher level, 

 whence it runs off into the fields. The water is 

 often drawn from this canal .into a higher ditch in the 

 same way, and thus by a series of planes it is con- 

 duced so that none is lost. After the water is taken 

 out of the great canals it is spread over the fields in 

 little ponds, and the flat fields are often divided into 

 small squares by means of embankments of earth one 

 foot in hight which run around them like fences, and 



