Notices of Egypt. 23 
The pleasure which the activity of this region affords to a miner, 
is not without alloy. ‘The mercury exerts a baneful influence on 
the health of the workmen, and it is painful to see with what eager- 
ness, young people in robust health, contend for the favor of expo- 
sing themselves to the risk of severe disease and often of premature 
death in these.mines. The population of the Almaden miners ex- 
cites a lively interest. ‘They are recruited, principally, in the villages 
of La Mancha, of Estremadura, and even of Portugal, whose inhab- 
itants come over, in crowds, to seek for employment, in the intervals 
of agricultural labor. It furnishes excellent workmen for the mines 
of Estremadura, who labor faithfully for the most moderate wages. 
Those travellers who are so prone to brand the Spanish people with 
the vague accusation of idleness, must have drawn their conclusions 
from the exterior of some of the villages, where misery and beggary 
have a tendency to brutalize the manners. ‘They might have found 
in Estremadura, in the lowest ranks of the social scale, an active and 
laborious people, retaining all the energy of the conquerors of Peru 
and Mexico, and exhibiting all their virtues whenever the means of 
exercising them are brought into activity.— Annales Des Mines. 
Art. HI.—Notices of Egypt—in a letter to the Editor from an 
American gentleman, dated on the Nile, July 30th, 1834. 
The Barage. 
My Dear Sir,—I have just come from examining one of the 
greatest projects of the age, and have been thinking that some no- 
tice of it might be interesting to the readers of the American Jour- 
nal of Science. Any one who sails but a few hours on the Nile, 
will have proof of the great value of irrigation, to these lands. Ar- 
tificial means for raising the water are in use along the whole stretch 
of the river, and wherever they are found, a beautiful speck of garden 
and shrubbery mixed with large trees, are the accompaniments : 
where such means are not used, the country is quite bare of vegeta- 
tion and as uninteresting as possible. Indeed, with the present ac- 
cumulation of rich soil all over the valley of the Nile, the several 
irrigations of the country during the floods, must be quite as useful 
to the soil, as the mud deposits. If, by any means then, the river 
could be raised so as to put it in the power of the farmers to lead the 
waters over the ‘whole surface of their lands, at all seasons of the 
