86 PROGRESS 



the " fat kine." At Port Said, the sea water is only 

 one metre below the road level, and there too the 

 basements were flooded frequently with a mixture of 

 sewage from the burst cesspools and subsoil water. 

 Such basements were filled up with sand from the 

 seashore by the landlords, who were persuaded to do 

 it at their own expense ; but the sand was free, and 

 the carriage cheap. In Cairo, on the other hand, the 

 birkets are for the most part owned by the Govern- 

 ment, and nothing would induce the Adminis- 

 tration to spend money for the purpose of reclaiming 

 its own property. In Cairo, the filling-up process, so 

 urgently desired, is an expensive operation. The 

 common price charged there by local contractors is 

 Is. 2d. per cubic metre, including the cost of material, 

 and great care must be exercised, or new birkets will 

 be formed by the borrow-pits made slyly by the con- 

 tractors the earth must be obtained from some- 

 where, as street sweepings are inadmissible from a 

 health standpoint. Such examples as these are set 

 down here in order to show that major sanitary works 

 are invariably expensive, and that the reclaiming of 

 swamps in the middle of large towns may cost much 

 money, even when the water comes from below, 

 instead of from above as rain. 



In Port Said we had to face another difficulty. 

 Our foremen were obliged to understand and to speak 

 six different languages. The town contains the riff- 

 raff of all the nations of Europe as well as native 

 Egyptians, Syrians, Indians, and others, including 

 Arabs and Bedawins. All these people are under the 



