62 
TRAVELS IN AFRICA, 
them both, viz. that their lands, becoming unoccupied, are 
never let but on terms ruinous to the tenant. For as there is a 
number of bidders, and the managers of them are exorbitant in 
their demands, the tenant becomes acceflbry to his own mifery, 
by engaging to pay the owner fo large a portion of the produd:, 
that his profits are abfolutely infignificant. 
I'hefe contrads are of various forms, but commonly made 
for a given number of years, or for life, in the nature of leafes. 
The occupier, affifted by his family, is the cultivator; and in. 
the operations of hufbandry fcarcely requires any other aid. 
Wh'cn the Nile rifes, thofe who are employed to water the 
fields are commonly hired labourers. Volney * has faid gene- 
rally, that the peafants of Egypt are hired labourers. It will 
hence be feen to how fmall a portion of them thofe terms can 
be properly applied. 
The hired fervants of the great are paid chiefly by having 
their food provided for them, and receiving occafionally pre- 
fents of clothes; excepting what they obtain by extortion, 
opportunities of which are given even to the loweft menial, by 
the fyftem of terror eftablifhed in the country. 
The tenant of land commonly holds no more than he and 
his family can cultivate, and gather the produce of. Yet he is 
far from being a villain, attached to the foil, having always the 
power of quitting his farm to obtain another in a different 
Englifh edit. p. 188. 
quarter. 
