The value to an English farmer of such a mine of artificial chemical manure as this may be conceived, and it would make the eyes brighten of one here who strengthens his land by applications of marl, or else has to content himself with a top dressing of chalk from some pit sunk in a corner of his holding.
Fairly plentiful still in Egypt, there must, of course, be a limit to this supply. The taking up of land is going steadily on, and consequently the remains of city after city have been and are being rapidly used up, thus necessitating the establishment of plans upon a practical basis for the restoration of land which should not be exhausted by heavy crops without the cultivator making a proper return. One of our students of agriculture, in a public address, deals largely with the necessity for the dissemination of a practical knowledge of the needs of the land. He speaks of the great waste of fertilising matter in the way in which the refuse stalks of two of the greatest crops of the Delta—cotton and sugar-cane—are burned in the furnaces of engines, for which purpose they are most valuable when it is taken into consideration that fuel wood is a rarity and coal a luxury of exorbitant price.
But after burning, so ignorant have the people been, that the tons upon tons in the aggregate of this rich ash from the engine fires which consume the refuse of the enormous crops of sugar-cane annually grown, have been looked upon as comparatively valueless, in spite of the fact that the ash contains almost all that is required for the growth of so exhaustive a crop, and it has been either cast away or sold for a trifle, to be used up in the manufacture of bricks. He adds, in words full of pregnant meaning, that even the fertile alluvium of the Nile Valley cannot long sustain this treatment without exhaustion, in spite of the much that is done by the feeding off and ploughing in of the leguminous crops, which play a great part in giving back what has been taken away.
Farms here, too, are often found with a large dovecote, as alluded to in the description of the Khedive’s estates; for the Egyptian cultivator has a fine substitute for the guano of the Peruvian Chincha Islands in that of the pigeons which are kept in flocks for the sake of this strong fertiliser. Undoubtedly they must take severe toll from the crops, whether green or fit for harvesting, though perhaps this is counterbalanced by the fact that the birds must gain a good subsistence upon the grain that would be wasted or go back to the soil, so much being shed at ingathering time in consequence of the heat.
This carefully-saved fertiliser is used by the Egyptian for applying to vegetables and such productions as water melons and other plants of the gourd family, which depend much for their size on stimulation.
The application of special commercial manures to Egyptian crops may be said to be still in the experimental stage. On the richest and most fertile soils they are not required, but on the poorer soils their effect is very apparent. For the cotton crop, superphosphate and nitrate of soda, in the proportion of 3 to 4 hundredweights superphosphate to 1.25 hundredweight nitrate of soda, mixed and applied to an acre, give a profitable return in an increased yield of cotton. Other manures, such as potash, have been tried, but did not prove satisfactory. Sulphate of ammonia and nitrate of soda give good results on poor land if applied to the wheat crop. As not more than half enough farmyard manure can be produced on large estates for fertilising the various crops, attention will be turned to chemicals should they prove to be profitable after exhaustive experiments.
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.