180 
A TRIP TO EGYPT. 
themselves being raised (like a railway embankment) above the 
surrounding land, to enable passengers to proceed during the time 
of the rising of the Nile. The kind here grown bears clusters of 
long flat pods very thin, but 8in. to lOin. long. 
The Sugar Industry. 
The rich soil on the banks of the Nile produces a fine crop of 
sugar cane, and there are some sixteen sugar factories in Egypt 
which belong to the government. Some of them are very large and 
fitted up in a most costly manner with the machinery, boilers, and 
refiners requisite for producing sugar from the cane. The first 
intimation that we were approaching one of these “ hives of 
industry ” was a cloud of smoke on the horizon, next the tall 
chimney, and then the brick or stone building itself. The cane is 
first cut into lengths of about 3ft. and then shot down an inclined 
plain, beneath stone rollers, the juice runs off along a channel at 
the bottom ; it is then raised by machinery a second time and passed 
beneath another pair of rolls, and then a third time, but with the 
addition of water to get out all the juice possible. The crushed 
cane is by then reduced to a white fibrous mass, which is sent in trucks 
to the desert to be dried, then brought back to be burnt as fuel in 
the works, as there is no coal and but very little wood in Egypt. 
There is no Bain in Egypt. 
Of course, the Delta is well watered by rain clouds driven from 
the Mediterranean, but they appear to exhaust themselves before 
reaching Upper Egypt. At Assouan we were informed that they 
had only had ten minutes’ rain during the last three and a half 
years, so that the country is entirely dependent upon the Nile for 
its fertility. 
Egypt is truly the land of sunshine ; while there, an English¬ 
man feels strangely at fault for w T ant of his usual comments on the 
weather on meeting with a friend, the weather in Egypt being 
always bright. 
The days are made truly glorious by their hours of uninterrupted 
sunshine ; but the evenings are still more glorious by the extent 
and beauty of the sunset views. As night after night the passengers 
June, 1893. 
