Cairo to Kisumu

by Frank G. Carpenter

It is, however, because of its quality rather than its quantity that Egyptian cotton holds such a commanding position in the world’s markets. Cotton-manufacturing countries must depend on Egypt for their chief supply of long-staple fibre. There are some kinds that sell for double the amount our product brings. It is, in fact, the best cotton grown with the exception of the Sea Island raised on the islands off the coasts of Georgia and South Carolina. The Sea Island cotton has a rather longer fibre than the Egyptian. The latter is usually brown in colour and is noted for its silkiness, which makes it valuable for manufacturing mercerized goods. We import an enormous quantity of it to mix with our cotton, and we have used the Egyptian seed to develop a species known as American-Egyptian, which possesses the virtues of both kinds.

There is a great difference in the varieties raised, according to the part of the Nile valley from which each kind comes. The best cotton grows in the delta, which produces more than four fifths of the output.

A trip through the Nile cotton fields is an interesting one. The scenes there are not in the least like those of our Southern states. Much of the crop is raised on small farms and every field is marked out with little canals into which the water is introduced from time to time. There are no great farm houses in the landscape and no barns. The people live in mud villages from which they go out to work in the fields. They use odd animals for ploughing and harrowing and the crop is handled in a different way from ours.

Let me give you a few of the pictures I have seen while travelling through the country. Take a look over the delta. It is a wide expanse of green, spotted here and there with white patches. The green consists of alfalfa, Indian corn, or beans. The white is cotton, stretching out before me as far as my eye can follow it.

Here is a field where the lint has been gathered. The earth is black, with windrows of dry stalks running across it. Every stalk has been pulled out by the roots and piled up. Farther on we see another field in which the stalks have been tied into bundles. They will be sold as fuel and will produce a full ton of dry wood to the acre. There are no forests in Egypt, where all sorts of fuel are scarce. The stalks from one acre will sell for two dollars or more. They are used for cooking, for the farm engines on the larger plantations, and even for running the machinery of the ginning establishments. In that village over there one may see great bundles of them stored away on the flat roofs of the houses. Corn fodder is piled up beside them, the leaves having been torn off for stock feed. A queer country this, where the people keep their wood piles on their roofs!

In that field over there they are picking cotton. There are scores of little Egyptian boys and girls bending their dark brown faces above the white bolls. The boys for the most part wear blue gowns and dirty white skullcaps, though some are almost naked. The little girls have cloths over their heads. All are barefooted. They are picking the fibre in baskets and are paid so much per hundred pounds. A boy will gather thirty or forty pounds in a day and does well if he earns as much as ten cents.

The first picking begins in September. After that the land is watered, and a second picking takes place in October. There is a third in November, the soil being irrigated between times. The first and second pickings, which yield the best fibre, are kept apart from the third and sold separately.

After the cotton is picked it is put into great bags and loaded upon camels. They are loading four in that field at the side of the road. The camels lie flat on the ground, with their long necks stretched out. Two bags, which together weigh about six hundred pounds, make a load for each beast. Every bag is as long and wide as the mattress of a single bed and about four feet thick. Listen to the groans of the camels as the freight is piled on. There is one actually weeping. We can see the tears run down his cheeks.

Now watch the awkward beasts get up. Each rises back end first, the bags swaying to and fro as he does so. How angry he is! He goes off with his lower lip hanging down, grumbling and groaning like a spoiled child. The camels make queer figures as they travel. The bags on each side their backs reach almost to the ground, so that the lumbering creatures seem to be walking on six legs apiece.

Looking down the road, we see long caravans of camels loaded with bales, while on the other side of that little canal is a small drove of donkeys bringing in cotton. Each donkey is hidden by a bag that completely covers its back and hides all but its little legs.