The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1886-03-09
IRRIGATION IN EGYPT.
Why the Egyptians Fail to Understand
the New Cultivation.

Why the Egyptians Fail to Understand
the New Cultivation.
nineteenth Century.I
The ancient wealth of Egypt has ever
been in its crop of corn. As surely as
the seasons come round, so surely has
the Nile risen year by year. From the
earliest time the valley of the Nile has
been divided by earthen enbankments
into succession Of great flats, measur-
ing occasionally as much as 100, 900
acres. The rising food is diverted by a
series of short canals into these fats,
where the water stands two or three feet
deep until it has soaked the soil and de-
posted its rich allulyial mud. BY this
time the Nile has subsidized. The drying
mud is rudely plowed and soWn, and
four or five months after the crop is
reaped. No rain has fallen on it, but
the soil has been sufficiently saturated
to require no further watering.
A rich crop is produced, but by this
system only one crop in the year, and
during the summer months, when, from
its latitude and temperature, one might
expect Egypt to be yielding sub-tropical
fruits, the empty fields lie baked and
parched. Mohammed Ali Pasha, whose
genius and energy created modern
Egypt, soon recognized that more might
be obtained out of the soil than this one
crop of wheat or beans He set to work,
therefore, in Lower Egypt to deepen the
canals, SO that they should flow in low
as well as high Nile. His people were
not long in discovering the benefits this
conferred on them. Pumps and water
wheels soon lined the banks of the ca
nails. Egypt became known as cotton
producing country, and during the
American civil war, twenty years ago,
wealth poured into it.
But this new system was a vastly
more complicated one than that which
it superseded. To suit the convenience
OF wealthy men numerous canals were
cut, without system or arrangement.
Complaints soon began that the crops
were deteriorating, that the soil was
being exhausted-no longer replenished
by lying two months a year under
muddy water. In many places q salt
eforescence appeared on the surface,
fatal to vegetation. In high Nile and
low Nile there was abundance of water
for all, but in low Nile, just when the
cotton crop wanted it most, there was
least to be had, and then the peas
ants poor little patch had every chance
of becoming withered, while the pasha's
broad acres were fourishing.
Worst of ALL this great network of
canals was yearly filed with Nile
deposit, which had yearly to be re-
moved, and an unpaid army of go, 900
peasants was employed for about half
Of every year effecting the necessary
clearances. In the long, narrow valley
Of Upper Egypt, except in one portion,
the old Pharaohic system of irrigation
still prevails, and there the Egyptian
has little to learn. In the delta the
new civilizations with perennial irriga-
ton is practiced, and in this, the richest
part of the country, Lord Dufferin soon
saw the gravest reasons for anxiety.
A system had been created which the
people did not understand. Ignorance
of the most ordinary rules of engineer
ing, Incidence and corruption were fast
destroying the country.