, as you probably
know it better, Indian corn, which forms the staple food of the people.
The brown feathery heads wave in the wind, but the corn itself is tucked
away in the thickness of the stalk. You must have seen a "cob" of Indian
corn some time, with all the flat yellow grains nestling in a honeycomb
of little cells. To-day in Egypt you will see everyone eating them; even
the solemn baby seated astride its mother's shoulder picks out the
grains and nibbles them like a little monkey. The straw part of the
plant is used for many things: it feeds the numerous domestic animals of
the Egyptians to begin with--the donkeys, camels, buffaloes, bullocks,
goats--and it forms thatch for the huts and makes bedding.

Notice that man over there in the field; his cotton gown is of the
purest blue, which shows up richly against the vivid green of the maize
stalks. There is another seated far back on the rump of a small donkey
who is tripping along on its stiff little legs. It wears no harness of
any kind beyond a cord round its neck, which enables anyone to catch
hold of it. The man has no saddle and he holds his long legs straight
forward to prevent his feet from touching the ground, and from time to
time he guides or goads the donkey with a little sharp-pointed stick.
Close behind him, walking fast to keep up, is a tall woman in black with
a black shawl covering her mouth, her dress is a mass of grey dust as
far as the waist, and drags up the dust in clouds as she moves. On her
head is a large bundle and on her hip a large baby. She is the wife of
the lordly individual riding so comfortably ahead, and she takes this
state of affairs as a matter of course. The scene arouses anger in the
breast of a nice American with a grey moustache and keen grey eyes, who
shares our compartment.

[Illustration: "MAN AND WIFE."]

"So long as they treat their womenfolk like that they'll never rise to
anything better," he says emphatically. "The higher the civilisation of
a nation is the higher the position of its women. A nation of men who
ride and let the women carry the burdens is bound to be rotten and
flabby."

Next there passes across our window-frame a flock of goats, but they are
not much like those we know--they are dark brown and black, with thick
rough coats and cheeky tufted tails; numbers of kids dance up and down
the steep sides of the tow-path after the manner of kids all the world
over. A small boy, dressed in what appears to