uffaloes, and the
clumsy-looking but effective Egyptian water-wheel, a rough wooden
contrivance that as it revolves, raises the water from below and pours it
from holes in the side into a wooden trough, from whence it flows over
the field.

Small rude shelters are erected close by, beneath which the attendant
fellah can squat in the shade and keep the meek and gentle, but lazy
buffaloes up to their task, by constant threats and bellicose
demonstrations. Most of these animals are blindfolded, a contrivance
that, no doubt, inspires them to pace round and round their weary circle
with becoming perseverance, inasmuch as it tends to keep them in
perpetual fear of the dusky driver beneath the shade.

People too poor, or with holdings too small, to justify the employment of
oxen in pumping water, raise it from the ditches themselves, with buckets
at the end of long well-sweeps; in some localities one can cast his eye
over the landscape and see scores of these rude sweeps continually rising
and falling, rising and falling.

A few windmills are also used for pumping, but the wind is a fickle thing
to depend on, and his utter dependence on the water supply makes the
Egyptian agriculturist unwilling to run such risks. Steam-engines, both
stationary and portable, are observed at frequent intervals. Both the
engines and the coal for fuel have to be imported from England; but they
evidently pump enough water to repay the outlay, otherwise there would
not be so many of them in use. It must be a rich, productive soil that
can afford the expensive luxury of importing steam-engines and coal from
a distant market to supply it with water for irrigation.

The sediment from the Nile, which settles in the canals and ditches, is
cleaned out at frequent intervals and spread over the fields, providing a
new dressing of rich alluvial soil to annually stimulate the productive
capacity of the soil.

In the larger cotton-fields the dusky sons and daughters of Egypt are
seen strung out in long rows, wielding cumbersome hoes, reminding one of
old plantation days in Dixie; or they are paddling about in the inundated
rice-fields like amphibious things. Swarms of happy youngsters are
splashing about in the canals and ditches; all about is teeming with life
and animation.

Villages are populous and close together. They are, for the most part,
mere jumbles of low, mud houses with curious domed roofs, and they rise
above the dead level of the delta l