326 Egyptian Village Life. 



its surface and the seed will grow. Nature's bounty is in no 

 part of the world more visible than in the valley of the Nile. 

 A narrow strip of land on each side the river is bounded by the 

 arid desert, where nothing but the Bedouin can live. Where 

 the river overflows, and the mud settles, there vegetation 

 thrives ; and so clearly is the line marked that it is possible for 

 a man to place one foot on the rich and fertile soil, and the 

 other on the hot desert sand. 



The plough used by the peasantry is a pointed beam of 

 wood, just dragged through the surface soil, deep enough to 

 give a bed to. the grain. The wildest weeds, with us, do not 

 grow more luxuriantly than the corn, the lentil, and the 

 tobacco-plant does with them. Everywhere nature laughs, 

 while man sighs over governmental maladministration. 



The farmer suffers from extortionate tax-collectors, or 

 thieving pashas ; the fellah, or husbandmen, and the poor 

 peasant, have deeper griefs ; they are liable to be torn from 

 their homes at any hour, by conscription, for the army, and a 

 happy and prospering family may be suddenly reduced to beg- 

 gary and want by the loss of its necessary master. Cruel are 

 the consequences this has brought about ; poor women, with the 

 feeling that their weakness must make a strength out of their 

 necessities, have endeavoured to nullify a fate that hangs over 

 their offspring, and have not scrupled to put out one eye of an 

 infant, or cut away the joint from its forefinger, to prevent the 

 dreaded conscription in after life. This, and ophthalmia, have 

 made more one-eyed men in Egypt than could be found in the 

 same space in any other part of the globe. A fair average of 

 the number of men maimed in the right hand may be gained 

 by reckoning only such as formed the crew of the boat in 

 which the author travelled — it was six out of fourteen, but the 

 others not exempt in this way had but one eye, or had lost the 

 front teeth, of which they had been deprived to hinder them 

 from being able to bite cartridges. 



The peasant is also liable to a conscription for labouring 

 purposes, ordered by the local government. He may be taken 

 from the necessary labour of his field or farm to construct 

 dykes, or other works thought necessary. For this he has no 

 pay, and is very hardly worked. When the late Pasha deter- 

 mined on the formation of the Mahmoudie canal, connecting 

 Cairo with the Nile, he formed it by this forced labour. Poor 

 men were torn from their homes, compelled to dig the basin of 

 the canal with any tools they had; the government helped 

 them in no way, not so much as a spade was given to any 

 one, no food provided for them, and no pay. With frantic 

 desperation, the starving creatures scratched at the earth 

 with their fingers, and died by thousands in the trenches. 



