Thus, in one sense, Egypt is the leanest country in the world, but it is the fattest in the quality of the food that nature gives it. Through the ages it has had one big meal every year. At the inundation of the Nile, for several months the waters spread over the land and were allowed to stand there until they dropped the rich, black fertilizing sediment brought down from the African mountains. This sediment has produced from two to three crops a year for Egypt through the centuries and for a long time was the sole manure that the land had. The hundreds of thousands of cattle, donkeys, camels, and sheep that feed off the soil give nothing back to it, for their droppings are gathered up by the peasant women and girls, patted into shape, and dried for use as fuel. Until late years the only manure that was used in any part of the country was that of pigeons and chickens, or the crumbled ruins of ancient towns, which, lying through thousands of years, have become rubbish full of fertilizing properties. Recently, as I have said, the use of artificial fertilizers has been encouraged with excellent results. The irrigation of Egypt is now conducted on scientific lines. The water is not allowed to spread over the country as it was years ago, but the arable area is cut up by canals, and there are immense irrigating works in the delta, to manage which during the inundation hundreds of thousands of men are required. Just at the point of the delta, about twelve miles above Cairo, is a great dam, or barrage, that raises the waters of the Nile into a vast canal from which they flow over the fan-like territory of Lower Egypt. All through Egypt one sees men scooping the water up in baskets from one level to another, and everywhere he finds the buffalo, the camel, or donkey turning the wheels that operate the crude apparatus for getting the water out of the river and onto the land.