The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1884-07-26
The Egyptian Peasant.

Such Of the 'fellahs," or peasants, as
have received some little culture know
that the waters of the Nile come from
the ''land of dark men"-from the
mountains of Abyssinia. In the year
1874, at the time of the war with Abys
sinia, it happened that the Nile was
slow to rise, and | have often heard,
here and there in the villages, the opinion
expressed that mo doubt the King Of
Dabeseh was revenging himself on the
Egyptians by preventing the waters of
the Nile from flowing down to them;"
or that an ancient threat of Ethiopian
kings, i. e., to lead off the Nile before
its entrance into Egypt, through a canal
into the Red Sea, was being carried
out.
But the inhabitants of the more $50
lated inland villages have not even such
lights as these, and should you chance
to come across such fellah crouching
at the door of his mud hut, holding his
kef (siesta,) and quietly content, with
as little mental eXertion as possible,
smoking his water-pipe, and should you
ask him as to his opinion Of the Nile
and its origin, you would in most cases
find that instead of entering upon geo.
graphical questions and hypothesis, he
would, with a grateful glance toward
heaven, answer, simply, Min Allah!'
i. e., from God. or from heaven; and he
would no doubt on his side turn qucs-
toner, and ask you, "Have you in your
country also Nile?" And great would
be his establishment and surprise on
hearing that our vegetation, our crops,
and our orchards are nourished by
water which falls from the clouds. To
him who hardly ever sees rain, and then
only in a rare and passing shower, this
seems a very precarious form of agricul-
ture.
Nothing is more natural than that the
Egyptian peasant, who has never been
beyond his own village, and whose con-
ceptions of the world, of men, and
things are of the most limited, should,
considering that the Nile gives him all
he has and all he needs, look upon it as
a direct gift of God.
Whether it be that his land is so
favorably situated that the Nile flows
over it at the time of inundation, or
that the water reaches it through arti-
fetal irrigation by means of a water
wheel worked by the camel or the
oxen of the peasant, or if he be very
poor, owning neither camel nor oxen,
and obliged to pull up the water in
shallow buckets made of reeds, and
with his own hand distribute it over his
fields, this much is certain, that only in
so far as the Nile has blessed his land
will his corn or his cotton grow, and
the harvest will be in exact proportion
to the amount of moisture which the
land has received.
And more than this, the Nile gives
him so much besides His hut is built
of Nile mud, and matched with reeds
that grow in the canals; out of Nile
clay is the beloved pipe, and also the
water jar out of which he drinks (and
he drinks incalculable quantities of
water) and even for the ''tarabooka, "
the peculiar kind of kettle-drum with
which he accompanies all his monoto-
nous songs and religious observances,
does the Nile give him the clay. l
have just said that the fellah is great
water drinker, and | may add so are all
foreigners in Egypt, for nowhere else
that | know of is the water so clear
and delicious. This is, no doubt, owing
to the constant flowing over bed of
finest sand and loan. Filtered or
cooled in large urn of clay, it becomes
perfectly cold, and is very refreshing.
DR.. 4. 1rautretter, IN Harper'S Mag
dzjle.