Cairo to Kisumu

by Frank G. Carpenter

The American farmer would sneer at the old-fashioned way in which these Egyptians cultivate the soil. He would tell them that they were two thousand years behind the time, and, still, if he were allowed to take their places he would probably ruin the country and himself. Most of the Egyptian farming methods are the result of long experience. In ploughing, the land is only scratched. This is because the Nile mud is full of salts, and the silt from Abyssinia is of such a nature that the people have to be careful not to plough so deep that the salts are raised from below and the crop thereby ruined. In many cases there is no ploughing at all. The seed is sown on the soft mud after the water is taken off, and pressed into it with a wooden roller or trodden in by oxen or buffaloes.

AFRICA

Last of the continents to be conquered by the explorers, and last to be divided up among the land-hungry powers, is now slowly yielding to the white man’s civilization.

Where ploughs are used they are just the same as those of five thousand years ago. I have seen carvings on the tombs of the ancient Egyptians representing the farm tools used then, and they are about the same as those I see in use to-day. The average plough consists of a pole about six feet long fastened to a piece of wood bent inward at an acute angle. The end piece, which is shod with iron, does the ploughing. The pole is hitched to a buffalo or ox by means of a yoke, and the farmer walks along behind the plough holding its single handle, which is merely a stick set almost upright into the pole. The harrow of Egypt is a roller provided with iron spikes. Much of the land is dug over with a mattock-like hoe.

Most of the grain here is cut with sickles or pulled out by the roots. Wheat and barley are threshed by laying them inside a ring of well-pounded ground and driving over them a sledge that rests on a roller with sharp semicircular pieces of iron set into it. It is drawn by oxen, buffaloes, or camels. Sometimes the grain is trodden out by the feet of the animals without the use of the rollers, and sometimes there are wheels of stone between the sled-runners which aid in hulling the grain. Peas and beans are also threshed in this way. The grain is winnowed by the wind. The ears are spread out on the threshing floor and the grains pounded off with clubs or shelled by hand. Much of the corn is cut and laid on the banks of the canal until the people have time to husk and shell it.

The chief means of carrying farm produce from one place to another is on bullocks and camels. The camel is taken out into the corn field while the harvesting is going on. As the men cut the corn they tie it up into great bundles and hang one bundle on each side of his hump. The average camel can carry about one fifth as much as one horse hitched to a wagon or one tenth as much as a two-horse team. Hay, straw, and green clover are often taken from the fields to the markets on camels. Such crops are put up in a baglike network that fits over the beast’s hump and makes him look like a hay or straw-stack walking off upon legs. Some of the poorer farmers use donkeys for such purposes, and these little animals may often be seen going along the narrow roads with bags of grain balanced upon their backs.

I have always looked upon Egypt as devoted mostly to sugar and cotton. I find it a land of wheat and barley as well. It has also a big yield of clover and corn. The delta raises almost all of the cotton and some of the sugar. Central and Upper Egypt are grain countries, and in the central part Indian and Kaffir corn are the chief summer crops. Kaffir corn is, to a large extent, the food of the poorer fellaheen, and is also eaten by the Bedouins who live in the desert along the edges of the Nile valley. Besides a great deal of hay, Egypt produces some of the very best clover, which is known as bersine. It has such rich feeding qualities that a small bundle of it is enough to satisfy a camel.

This is also a great stock country. The Nile valley is peppered with camels, donkeys, buffaloes, and sheep, either watched by herders or tied to stakes, grazing on clover and other grasses. No animal is allowed to run at large, for there are no fences and the cattle thief is everywhere in evidence. The fellaheen are as shrewd as any people the world over, so a strayed animal would be difficult to recover. Much of the stock is watched by children. I have seen buffaloes feeding in the green fields with naked brown boys sitting on their backs and whipping them this way and that if they attempt to get into the crops adjoining. The sheep and the goats are often watched by the children or by men who are too old to do hard work. The donkeys, camels, and cows are usually tied to stakes and can feed only as far as their ropes will reach.

The sheep of Egypt are fine. Many of them are of the fat-tailed variety, some brown and some white. The goats and sheep feed together, there being some goats in almost every flock of sheep.