At that time the people were ground down to the earth and had barely enough for mere existence. Taxes were frightfully high and wages pitifully low. The proceeds from the crops went mostly to Turkey and to the bankers of Europe who had obtained the bonds given by the government to foreigners living in Egypt. In fact, they had as hard lives as in the days of the most tyrannical of the Pharaohs. But since that time the British have had a chance to show what they could do, irrigation projects and railroad schemes have been put through, cotton has come into its own, and I see to-day a far more prosperous land and people than I did at the end of the last century. CHAPTER V FELLAHEEN ON THEIR FARMS For the last month I have been travelling through the farms of the Nile valley. I have visited many parts of the delta, a region where the tourist seldom stops, and have followed the narrow strip that borders the river for several hundred miles above Cairo. The delta is the heart of Egypt. It has the bulk of the population, most of the arable land, the richest soil, and the biggest crops. While it is one of the most thickly settled parts of the world, it yields more to the acre than any other region on earth, and its farm lands are the most valuable. I am told that the average agricultural yield for all Europe nets a profit of thirty-five dollars per acre, but that of Lower Egypt amounts to a great deal more. Some lands produce so much that they are renting for fifty dollars an acre, and there are instances where one hundred dollars is paid. I saw in to-day’s newspapers an advertisement of an Egyptian land company, announcing an issue of two and one half million dollars’ worth of stock. The syndicate says in its prospectus that it expects to buy five thousand acres of land at “the low rate of two hundred dollars per acre,” and that by spending one hundred and fifty thousand dollars it can make that land worth four hundred dollars per acre within three years. Some of this land would now bring from two hundred and fifty to three hundred dollars per acre, and is renting for twenty dollars per acre per annum. The tract lies fifty miles north of Cairo and is planted in cotton, wheat, and barley.