Wessington Springs herald. (Wessington Springs, Aurora County, Dakota [S.D.]) 1883-1891, 1889-08-23
EGYP1I1N PEASANT.S.
Ho,c They lire and Dress.

Ho,c They Lire and Dress.
Frank G. Carpenter, in the Philadel-
phia Press, has this to say of the Egyp-
tan PEASANTS:
Out of the six and half million people
of Egypt, fully six million are peasants.
They are known as "fellahs.' They are
the tillers of the soil and they are the
people who do the work, and make the
money which pays the immense yearly
debt of Egypt. These "fellahs" are the
ancient Egyptians. They have been
oppressed throughout the ages until
they have no spirit left in them, and
they are happy if they can get enough
to keep themselves alive. You seetheir
mud villages everywhere and they slave
from morning until night in the fields.
Their houses arc rarely more than ten
feet high and often not more than eight
feet square. In an Egyptian village the
houses are built close together. There
are no pavements, gas lamps nor mod
ern improvements of any kind. The
furniture of each house consists of a few
mats, sheep skin, a copper kettle and
some earthenware pots. The bed of
the family is ledge of mud built in the
side of the room.
There are no windows and the cook
ing is usually done out of doors in
little earthen, pot-like stove. The fuel
is OF dried COW, camel OF buffalo man
urc, and the food of the family is mix
ture of sorgum seed, millet and beans
ground up into flour and baked into
sort of big, round, flat cake. A large
part of the food of the fellahin consists
of greens, and I watched one eating
turnip yesterday. He began at the tip
of the root and ate the raw indigestible
vegetable to the very green 1 have
seen them eating Glove, and am told
that that they seldom have any meat.
Out of the milk of the buffalo and COW
they make a sort Of curd-llke cheese
which is extensively used. They use no
knives, forks, nor spoons, and at supper
they have, in addition to their vegeta-
blcs, sauce of onions and butter, into
which they dip pieces of bread and eat it.
These Egyptian!peasants wear little or
no clothing while working in the fields,
and here in Cairo the apparel of the
men consists of long blue gown which
comes to below the knees, and a brown
skull cap of wool. The women have
gowns of blue cotton, and the better
class OF them cover up their faces with
a long veil, which is fastened just under
the eyes so as to hide the lower part of
the features. Between this veil and the
cloth head dress there is brass spool
about three inches long, on each side of
which the eyes show out. Some of the
girls are beautiful, but 1 imagine that
many of them look better with their
wells on than off. The Egyptian eye is
large, black and sensuous. The eye
lashcs are very long on both lids and
the edges of the eye-lids are often
blackened with kohl. The eyebrows
are straight and smooth and never
bushy. The cheek-bones are high, the
forehead is receding and the nose some
what inclined to fairness. In the coun-
try you find much darker women than
you do in Carlo, and 1 see scores of
them working in the fields without wells.
These fellahin are Mohammedans. and
they believe that Christians will be
eternally damned. Very few of them
attain riches and but few rise to power.
Arab Pasha was "fellah," and he was
one Of the few exceptions to this rule.