Once more the croakers were wrong. The fellah justified the confidence of Mr. Willcocks and his colleagues, that he was not unlike other men, and would work gladly for a wage. And so the struggle for emancipation went on with increased vigour. In 1886 £250,000 were provided by the Caisse for the reduction of the corvée, so that while in 1883 107,000 men had been called out in the Delta alone, in 1887 the number had been reduced to 27,500. Finally, December, 1889, saw the last of the system, and the performance of earthwork maintenance by the corvée was finally abolished. The Government supplemented the £250,000 a year received from the Caisse by another £150,000. In former days the labour required to clear the canals was estimated in the Delta alone at £530,000. For the sum of £400,000 Egypt got rid of the burden throughout the whole country. It was a bargain well worth making at a far higher cost. No greater boon could have been conferred upon the fellaheen. No longer are their lives made ‘bitter with hard bondage, in morter, and in brick, and in all manner of service in the field.’ That ‘evil case’ is ended. They labour indeed, but it is voluntary labour, without ‘groaning and anguish of spirit.’
The Government, of course, retains the right to call out the corvée in case of any grave national emergency, and every year, too, it is called out to guard the banks in flood-time. But the flood-corvée is cheerfully borne. It entails no hardship on the people. Its incidence, too, has been very much diminished, as the following figures show (the period of service is 150 days):
| Year. | Number of Men called out. | State of River. |
|---|---|---|
| 1888 | 59,000 | Low flood. |
| 1889 | 50,000 | Medium flood. |
| 1890 | 48,000 | „ |
| 1891 | 45,000 | „ |
| 1892 | 84,000 | Very high flood. |
| 1893 | 33,000 | Low flood. |
| 1894 | 49,000 | High flood. |
| 1895 | 37,000 | Medium flood. |
| 1896 | 26,000 | „ |
| 1897 | 11,000 | Low flood. |
| 1898 | 19,000 | High flood. |
| 1899 | 8,000 | Very low flood. |
| 1900 | 14,000 | Low flood. |
| 1901 | 9,000 | „ |
| 1902 | 5,000 | Very low flood. |
The figures tell their own tale. Experience and good organization have enormously decreased the number of men called out, so that it is now but a very slight burden upon the people. The date of calling out has also been altered to August 15 instead of August 1. The possession of the Soudan, and an accurate record of the state of the gauges in those regions, will also assist in making more accurate forecasts of the nature of the flood. In 1900 more men were called out than were required, because the flood came down early and promised to be a high one, but failed to fulfil expectations. The levels in the Soudan were known, but, there being no previous experience to judge them by, no inferences could be drawn from them. But the Soudan readings will be more and more useful as time goes on.
But even apart from this, there is great hope of a steady diminution in the numbers called out, and even that, except in years of high flood, the corvée may not be required at all. The record of the year 1901 is of remarkable promise in this respect. North of Cairo no corvée was called out at all, for the first time in the history of Egypt. The flood was low, but not exceptionally low. In any year Upper Egypt is responsible for far the greater number, and this is largely due to the extent of the basin banks which have to be guarded. It is remarkable that the two districts in which the greatest number were called out were in charge of native Egyptian inspectors, who were no doubt influenced by the old tradition that vast numbers of men should be employed. At any rate, as perennial irrigation increases in Upper Egypt, fewer men will be required, concurrently with the disuse of the basin dykes. And it seems likely that in years to come the whole task will be performed by contract labour; though the power of calling out the corvée will always be held in reserve in case of any specially dangerous flood. But in such a case the difficulty will be rather to prevent the work from being hindered by excessive numbers. There will be no doubt of the willingness to serve of practically the whole population.
CHAPTER VII
RESERVOIR PRELIMINARIES
In dealing with the history of the Barrage I have somewhat anticipated the order of events. It was the prospect of the coming Reservoir and an increased water-supply in summer that urged on the engineers to make assurance doubly sure by placing the strength of that structure beyond all doubt. It is time to pass from the Delta to Assouan.
No country in the world tells its story more readily to the traveller than Upper Egypt. As he passes up the broad waterway of the Nile, he may survey the whole life of the land without stirring from the deck of his steamer. If he has been in Egypt before, he cannot fail to be struck by the growth of its prosperity; it forces itself upon him in the bearing of the people, and in the number of their flocks and herds, now as ever the outward and visible sign of material well-being. Even the squalid clusters of mud huts, often roofless, or covered only by a few loose canes, dirty and miserable as they seem to Western eyes, with nothing substantial among them except the tomb of some sheikh or the inevitable pigeon-houses, are only proofs of the genial climate, which makes a roof overhead, and clothing as well, among the least of the necessities of life. The people themselves, hard workers as they are, have a happy and prosperous aspect, and the crowds of naked children, brown as the waters by whose edge they play, look as cheerful and contented as the vast colonies of pigeons, which live under very similar conditions to their owners.
On each side of the river-valley, here and there, especially on the eastern side, coming right to the water’s edge, rise the hills of the desert. Where the domain of the water ceases a man may stand with one foot in the bare and barren sand and the other in the most fertile soil in the world. Everywhere along the bank, hour after hour, day after day, the traveller may see the peasants lifting the water with the primitive shadoofs, tier upon tier, up to the level of the fields, or the oxen turning the sakieh. A hundred times a day he will have borne in upon him the fact that all he sees, from the kid upon the dykes to those obelisks of modern Egypt, the tall chimneys of the sugar factories, owes its existence absolutely to the water. Close behind the teeming villages and the luxuriant crops, the palm-trees and the acacias, the sugar-canes and the maize-fields, rise the gaunt limestone rocks and the sandy desert, fit emblems of the famine that is ever ready to swoop down should the water fail.