72 



NOETH-EAST AFRICA. 



the wells does not begin to rise for eight or ten days, while at the distance of half 

 a mile it is delayed till the floods are actually subsiding. Hence the curious 

 phenomenon that, when the Nile is at its lowest ebb, the water in wells at a 

 distance from the stream rises some 10 or 12 feet higher than the river itself. 

 The cultivators are thus enabled to continue the work of irrigation, which would 

 otherwise be impossible. 



The canals and transverse ditches utilised as a means of communication between 

 the villages cut up all the cultivated lands into a vast "chessboard," whose parting 

 lines are, so to say, alternately raised and svmk below the surface. The vivifying 

 fluid circulates everywhere, like blood in the animal arterial system. But the 

 maintenance of this intricate organism involves enormous care, the least disorder 

 in these almost level plains often sufiicing to cause crevasses and obstructions, and 

 converting the flowing streams into stagnant waters. Worn out by ceaseless toil, 



Fig. 26. — Section of thk Nile Valley at Stot. 

 Scale 1 : 100,000. 



, 3,300 Yards. 



harassed and disheartened by ofiicial rapacity, the f ellahin sometimes lack the energy 

 required to keep in good order the canals that are indispensable to feed the primitive 

 appliances for irrigating their fields. On the large estates the water is raised by 

 means of the sakiyeh, a system of revolving buckets like those of Syria, worked in 

 Egypt by oxen and asses, in Nubia by camels. But most of the peasantry make 

 use of the so-called shadufs, vessels or baskets attached to both ends of a balanced 

 lever, and by two men lowered and raised alternately, and discharging their 

 contents into a distributing riU. A shaduf will thus raise the water to a height of 

 8 or 10 feet, a second and even a third contrivance of the same kind successively 

 carrying it to the highest required level. But very little of the water that might 

 be obtained for irrigation purposes is secured by this rudimentary apparatus. Of 

 the 4,200 billions of cubic feet yearly discharged by the Nile, not more than 175 

 billions are thus utilised by the riverain populations, so that not more than half, or 

 perhaps a third, of the arable land is brought under cultivation. Scarcely forty 



