In that field over there they are picking cotton. There are scores of little Egyptian boys and girls bending their dark brown faces above the white bolls. The boys for the most part wear blue gowns and dirty white skullcaps, though some are almost naked. The little girls have cloths over their heads. All are barefooted. They are picking the fibre in baskets and are paid so much per hundred pounds. A boy will gather thirty or forty pounds in a day and does well if he earns as much as ten cents. The first picking begins in September. After that the land is watered, and a second picking takes place in October. There is a third in November, the soil being irrigated between times. The first and second pickings, which yield the best fibre, are kept apart from the third and sold separately. After the cotton is picked it is put into great bags and loaded upon camels. They are loading four in that field at the side of the road. The camels lie flat on the ground, with their long necks stretched out. Two bags, which together weigh about six hundred pounds, make a load for each beast. Every bag is as long and wide as the mattress of a single bed and about four feet thick. Listen to the groans of the camels as the freight is piled on. There is one actually weeping. We can see the tears run down his cheeks. Now watch the awkward beasts get up. Each rises back end first, the bags swaying to and fro as he does so. How angry he is! He goes off with his lower lip hanging down, grumbling and groaning like a spoiled child. The camels make queer figures as they travel. The bags on each side their backs reach almost to the ground, so that the lumbering creatures seem to be walking on six legs apiece. Looking down the road, we see long caravans of camels loaded with bales, while on the other side of that little canal is a small drove of donkeys bringing in cotton. Each donkey is hidden by a bag that completely covers its back and hides all but its little legs. In these ways the crop is brought to the railroad stations and to the boats on the canals. The boats go from one little waterway to another until they come into the Mahmudiyeh Canal, and thence to Alexandria. During the harvesting season the railroads are filled with cotton trains. Some of the cotton has been ginned and baled upon the plantations, and the rest is in the seed to be ginned at Alexandria. There are ginning establishments also at the larger cotton markets of the interior. Many of them are run by steam and have as up-to-date machinery as we have. At these gins the seed is carefully saved and shipped to Alexandria by rail or by boat. [Illustration: The Nile bridge swings back to let through the native boats sailing down to Alexandria with cargoes of cotton and sugar grown on the irrigated lands farther upstream.]