THE TECHNOLOGIST. [June 1, 1865. 



498 



NOTES ON EGYPTIAN AGRICULTURE. 



Amongst all the cotton-growing countries called to sudden prosperity 

 by the American war, none have succeeded better in the art, whether 

 for quality of staple or quantity grown per acreage of arable surface, 

 than modern Egypt. Old Mehemet Ali had already prepared the fel- 

 laheen for the present demand by his various enactments for the culti- 

 vation ; and amongst all his various schemes for making Egypt great, 

 glass manufactories, spinning, weaving, dyeing establishments, salt-pits, 

 arsenals, foundries, sugar factories, &c, cotton-growing will prove most 

 important, and cotton will pay for all the other failures. For the cotton 

 crop of 1863 Egypt received over twelve millions, for that of 1864 she 

 will receive over twenty millions, as the notices in the ' Times ' of " gold 

 withdrawn for Alexandria" daily testify. 



la the autumn of ls63 things were very queer in Egypt ; the extra- 

 ordinary inundation of the Nile, spreading for miles on each side of the 

 river's natural bed, had drowned the crops and broken the railway com- 

 munications. Besides this, a violent murrain, that seemed like a second 

 Mosaic plague, desolated the country ; the native oxen and buffaloes, as 

 well as those hastily imported iroin the coasts of the Black Sea, Trieste, 

 Spain, Portugal, and France, were all seized ; scores of dead beasts 

 were floating down the swollen waters of the Nile ; carcases lay in every 

 road, and in every field and ditch. la fact, so rapid was the course of 

 the malady, that even the polyglot European speculators of Alexandria 

 neglected for a little while to buy up the hides and hoofs for export.* 



The natives were in despair, and bewailed their splendid oxen with 

 many bitter tears ; the only available animals left were the camel and 

 the donkey, both better suited for carrying than for draught, as the 

 Arab horses, all thoroughbred, are little fit for agricultural purposes. A 

 sight pretty commonly seen at this time was the patient camel (about 

 as vicious a beast as ever stepped) and the much-enduring Egyptian 

 donkey yoked together (the yoke at an angle of about 60°), dragging the 

 simple Egyptian plough, the industrious fellah encouraging them from 

 the plough handle, who woufd, indeed, have scratched up the land with 

 his fingers rather than miss his crop. Meanwhile, the Government of 

 the Viceroy set to work on the right things ; double pay was offered to 



* With reference to the murrain, a well-known literary Bey of Cairo related 

 the following, which lias passed from coffee-house to coffee-house all over the 

 country :— A Sheikh-el-Beled, or chief of a village, rendered public praise to 

 Allah, for that it had pleased him to confound the infidel cotton -growers of 

 America (might their tombs and beards be ever defiled !) in a bloody war, 

 whereby the cotton grown by his servants in Egypt, the true believers, fetched a 

 high price from those sons of dogs and pigs, the English ; but Allah, displeased 

 at the selfishness of the Sheikh and his people, as a punishment sent the 



