Chapter Seven.
After what has been written about the water navigation of this country, a few words may be said respecting the means of conducting the land traffic. In the past the great river and its Delta mouths, supplemented by the canals, formed the main roads for the conveyance of produce. Now the iron track has begun to make its way, and the long creeping trains of trucks and carriages may be seen gliding over the plain, drawn by the mighty power of old George Stephenson’s invention, though in this hot country the familiar trail of soft whitish grey vapour is often wanting, dying out at once as it does in the rays of the ardent sun. In addition, Egypt is being treated as Britain was some two thousand years ago by the Romans, who well grasped the value of a good trunk road, and while those were formed for military purposes and the holding in check of the subject race, these in connection with the Khedive’s peaceful rule and for the advance of agriculture are devoted to the carrying of produce from market to market, or to some railway station, and this, too, at much less cost than in the olden days, when most of the grain was borne from the place of its growth upon camel back, or slung in bags on either side of the patient, vigorous, and handsome donkeys which are raised in this country.
A correspondent of the Morning Post writes:
While Upper Egypt is nowhere more than a fertile strip, bordered by two deserts, the comparatively large area of the Delta, its intersection by a multitude of canals, and the absence of a large system of metalled roads, have long rendered necessary an improvement of communications in the interest both of the fellaheen and of the European or Levantine landowners. Agricultural roads offer but a partial solution of the difficulties caused by these conditions; donkeys, mules, and camels are still highly useful, and will long be extensively used for the transport of commodities over a short distance, or in cases where time is no object to the transporter; but it is unnecessary to dilate on the defects of animal compared with mechanical transport. Branches of the Nile and the canals which in the maps cover the Delta with such a network of blue lines are also of great value, but the number of canals which are perennially navigable is limited, and the canal barge is nowhere renowned for speed, while sailing boats cannot use certain canals at all in the dry season, and their use of others is often attended by the risk of grounding.
En passant, Mr Wallace mentions a singular fact in connection with the making of the trunk roads. In Europe we are accustomed to see them kept as level as is consistent with the cost of making, and raised above the level while provided with proper drains to carry off the too abundant water. Here it has been found that to give the road much rise above the surrounding levels is a mistake, in consequence of the large amount of salt the unredeemed districts contain. The salt rises to the surface, forming an efflorescence as in the American plains, and especially in the stiff lands it has a tendency to interfere with the ways of nature, where the particles adhere together, causing them to fall apart in the shape of dust, which is one of the objectionable features of an Egyptian road.
Anyone who has read about Egypt will recall matters full of suggestion of likely difficulties regarding the keeping open of a road, while those who have travelled through the country have much to say about the prevalence of dust. How many discoveries in the past have been made of wondrous relics that have lain buried for ages covered in deeply—and preserved—by the drifting dust or sand! And, with regard to this drifting, attention has been drawn by Mr Wallace, in his agricultural address, to a singular physical fact in connection with the shifting of the sand. This might be expected to follow, on the whole, the course of the prevailing winds, and be carried mainly in their direction; but there are singular variations, probably due to local waves or currents of air near the surface of the earth.
In one considerable portion of the land of Goshen the sand is swept from south to north, while in another part, along the west bank of the Nile, at the north of Cairo, its direction is from east to west. But a great deal of the raising and drifting of the finer portions of the earth is dependent upon whether the wind be moisture-laden or the reverse. If the air be moist, a breeze blowing at the rate of, say, four miles an hour from the north will have no effect upon the deep dust, while one from the arid south, possessed of about half the other’s force, will raise the almost impalpable soil in clouds.
But, as elsewhere, now that Egypt is awakening from her long slumber, the sand is giving way to the soil.
The correspondent of the Morning Post gives some very terse and exhaustive accounts of the railway system now extending through the Delta, and dwells upon the fact that the agricultural light railways—similar to the one mentioned earlier in these pages, made by the Khedive to his estates near Cairo—have been a distinct success, and he goes on to say that:
The broad-gauge State railways of the Egyptian Delta may be roughly compared with the sticks of a fan. Converging at Cairo, the headquarters of the railway administration, and the goal of the provincial lines, the railways diverge to Alexandria, to Dessouk in the north of the Delta, on the Rosetta branch of the Nile, to Damietta, to Salahieh in the north-east, and to Ismailia. Several lines link the important towns on these branches; for example, Mansourah is connected with the Salahieh line, and a railway along the coast connects Alexandria and Rosetta; but large areas, notably in the crowded Menoufieh Province, in Beherah, and in the north-east of the Delta, lacked facilities for rapid transmission of goods and passengers to the larger towns served by the State lines until the advent of the agricultural railways. It would be unnecessary and unprofitable to enumerate all the agricultural lines which have been constructed in the last few years. Their distribution may be understood if, returning to the fan metaphor, they are regarded as threads running between and generally connecting the diverging sticks of the fan of State lines.
So successful have these lines been that applications have been made for permission regarding the construction of fresh railways to extend in various directions for over another three hundred miles, most of these being in the Menoufieh Province, where desert land is being reclaimed. Mr Gunn’s report gives the mileage covered since 1896, when the concessions were granted:
In 1897 there were fifty-four miles of railway open, in 1899 430 miles, and in 1902 673. Within a year or two there will be at least one thousand miles open for traffic.
And, by the way, one of the principal uses made of these lines of rails is for the conveyance of the ancient deposits of sabbakh or coufri from district to district—the rich fertiliser to the comparatively barren lands—the old-world traces of civilisation to the new, to parts of Egypt which have been written down for ages as desert, but which are now found to become great suppliers of produce that can be easily consigned to the many markets opening up at home and abroad.