Egypt of the Pharaohs and of the Khedivé

by F. Barham Zincke

But the consequences on the life and habits of the people of this dearth of wood are not yet exhausted. It also puts difficulties in the way of their cooking their food. For instance, they cannot bake their bread as often as they would wish. A family may not have fuel enough to admit of the recurrence of this expenditure of it more frequently than perhaps a dozen times in the year. In order, therefore, to keep their bread sweet, they have to cut it into thin slices, and dry it in the sun. And to obtain a sufficiency of fuel, for even these restricted uses, they have to collect carefully, and to turn to account, everything that can be made to burn. As I have mentioned elsewhere, their chief resource for this purpose are the contributions they very thankfully receive from their herbivorous animals. A great part of the time of the women is spent in manufacturing this material into combustible cakes. And a shockingly dirty process it is. The raw material is deposited in a hole in the ground, together with a great deal of water. A woman, seated on the ground, on the brink of the hole, stirs up the material and water with her bare arms, which are immersed to beyond the elbow. This stirring is continued till a smooth fluid mixture has been produced, which is then left in this state, for the water to evaporate, and to drain off through the ground. When the material has in this way arrived at a sufficiently tough consistency it is made into thin cakes, which are set in the sun to dry. When this has been effected, they are stored away for use. As might have been expected, in the apportionment of domestic duties, this manufacture generally falls to the lot of the more ancient dames.

Those, who are curious in tracing up to their sources the customs, and practices, of different people, may refer many other things that they will see, and some that they will not see, in Egypt, to this dearth of wood. In agriculture no carts, or vehicles of any kind, are used: there is no wood of which they might be made. It is, therefore, cheaper that everything should be carried on donkeys and camels. Here, when you see a tree, you are looking on what may be transformed into an essential part of the instrument of transportation. The cart, or waggon, and the animals that are to draw it, together form the complete instrument. In Egypt, when you see a bundle of chopped straw, and a field of lucern, you are looking on all, out of which the Egyptian means of land transportation are to be created. In Egypt, when a donkey has any shoes, they consist merely of a piece of flat iron, the size of the bottom of the hoof, cut out of a thin plate. It is easy to cut this out, but it would be expensive, where fuel is so scarce, to forge a shoe. This list might be very largely increased.

Nor are we here in England, three thousand miles off, unaffected by the niggardliness of nature to Egypt in this matter. The country possesses railroads, steamboats, and sugar, and other, factories on a large scale, but no fuel to create for them motive power. This must come from without, and it is all supplied from English collieries, and brought in English vessels. In return for it we get no insignificant portion of the produce of the valley of the Nile. How strangely are things concatenated. The rains that fall in the highlands of Abyssinia, and in equatorial Africa, are grinding down pebbles in the channels of mountain torrents, and washing away the vegetable mould, and transporting their infinitesimal water-borne particles to Egypt, for the purpose of giving employment to the coal-miners of Durham, and to the weavers of Manchester. The intelligence and industry of England turn to account, through the medium of Egypt, the evaporation that takes place on the Indian and South Atlantic oceans. Such are the working and interworking of the physical and mental machinery of this world of ours: or rather, perhaps, we have here some slight indication of what they will one day become.

CHAPTER XLVIII.
TREES IN EGYPT.

Divisæ arboribus patriæ.—Virgil.

Vegetation is the garb of nature; and no description of any region can pretend to completeness till the trees—the most conspicuous part of the vegetation—have been brought into view. In Egypt as each specimen of the few species of trees commonly met with (the species may be counted on the fingers of one hand) must be carefully looked after to be kept alive, every particular tree comes to be regarded as beautiful, and valuable. The knowledge the traveller has of this care and regard, which have been bestowed upon them, enhances the interest with which he beholds them. Besides, the trees of Egypt are entitled to a place in any description of the country, for the additional reason, that on its level plain they are the most marked and pleasing objects on which the eye rests. A work, therefore, that aims at giving anything like a picture of Egypt, must bring out, with some little distinctive prominency, the characteristics of each species.

Among the trees of Egypt, the first place is held by the palm. On landing at Alexandria you find it around the city in abundance, and throughout the country you are never long out of sight of it. It is seen to most advantage from the river against the sky. It appears most in place when, in sufficient numbers to form a grove, it overshadows some river-side village. You there look upon it as the beneficent friend and coadjutor of the poor villagers. You know that it gives them much they could not get elsewhere, and which they could ill spare—shade, boxes, baskets, cordage, thatch, timber, and the chief of their humble luxuries, in return for the protection and water they have given to it. We often hear it spoken of as the queen of the vegetable world. I had rather say that it is a form of grace, and beauty, of which the eye never tires.

The tree usually employed in forming avenues, where shade is the first object, is the broad-podded acacia. The distinguishing feature in this is the largeness and abundance of its singularly dark green leaves. Its foliage, indeed, is so dense, that no ray of sunlight can penetrate through it. The effect is very striking. In one of these avenues, that has been well kept, you will find yourself in a cool gloom, both the coolness, and the gloom, being such that you cannot but feel them, while you see the sun blazing outside. The road from Boulak to the Pyramids of Gizeh is planted the whole way with these trees. For the first two or three miles they are of some age, and, having now met overhead above the road, the shelter, even at mid-day, is complete. For the rest of the way the trees are not older than the Prince of Wales’s visit, they having been planted along the sides of the road that was on that occasion made to do him honour, in Eastern fashion. No tree more easily establishes itself, or grows more rapidly, if sufficiently watered. All that is required is to cut off a limb, no matter how large, or from how old a tree, and to set it in the ground. If it be supplied with water it grows without fail. This acacia is the lebekh of the natives.