1874.] 



287 



[Delmar. 



In 1833, Egypt was estimated to possess 3,500,000 feddans of cultivable 

 land, "if cultivation were pushed to its utmost extent." — MacGreggor. 



The official survey of 1843 comprised 6,984,135 feddans susceptible of 

 cultivation ; but this included the superficial surface of the Nile and 

 canals. The cultivated, and, doubtless, the cultivable, portion (at that 

 time) consisted of 3,836,340 feddans as follows : 



Lower Egypt. 

 Middle Egypt. 

 Upper Egypt., 



Total . . . . 



No of Feddans 

 cultivated. 



2,749,106 

 750,409 

 826,825 



3,826,340 



No. of Feddans un- 

 cultivated, includ- 

 ing Surface of Nile 

 and Canals. 



1,551,011 

 843,608 

 763,176 



3,157,795 



The report of 1843, and also a late report of the British Consul, are so 

 worded as to convey the impression that there is almost as miich cultiv- 

 able land uncultivated as there is ciiltivated ; but this is not the fact. 

 The so-called cultivable land, not cultivated, consists, and has always 

 consisted, for the most part either of the surfaces of the Nile and the 

 canals, or of lands in the Delta and elsewhere, which from various causes 

 have become barren or unavailable. 



" A perpetual struggle is carried on between the desert and cultiva- 

 tion. In many parts of the Delta the desert has invaded and mastered 

 the soil." — MacGreggor, 1833. 



" In the Faioum, which was formerly the most richly cultivated part 

 of Egypt, the desert has made many inroads." — Ibid. 



"In * * * places on the western border of the Nile Valley, the shifting 

 sands of the desert have encroached on the domain of cultivation." — 

 Com. Rel., 1863, p. 532. 



"When the land, as has happened in Lower Egypt and the Delta, 

 from the despotic appropriation and thriftless husbandry of * * * rulers, 

 has become what is called aladish, and gone to waste, light plows (such 

 as are used here) are powerless to improve it. Villages, for example, 

 often deprived of laborers to furnish recruits for foreign wars, were at 

 one time depopulated by the government, and their lands exploited (used 

 up) by a short-sighted and ruinous system of agriculture, from the effects 

 of which the country still suffers. In order to have an uninterrupted 

 succession of crops, the inundation (of the Nile) was excluded by dykes, 

 irrigation being supplied from the brackish water of wells. The deposit 

 of salt after evaporation, added to that which would be pushed to the 

 surface by the upward filtration of the Nile, would soon convert a once 

 fruitful tract into a desert, where nothing would grow but a rank crop of 

 'halfa,' a deep-rooted, tough grass, which, with the ordinary farming 

 implements of Egypt, it is almost impossible to extirpate. It has thus 



