The whole of the delta is one big farm dotted with farm villages and little farm cities. There are mud towns everywhere, and there are half-a-dozen big agricultural centres outside the cities of Alexandria and Cairo. Take, for instance, Tanta, where I am at this writing. It is a good-sized city and is supported by the farmers. It is a cotton market and it has a great fair, now and then, to which the people come from all over Egypt to buy and sell. A little to the east of it is Zagazig, which is nearly as large, while farther north, upon the east branch of the Nile, is Mansura, another cotton market, with a rich farming district about it. Damietta and Rosetta, at the two mouths of the Nile, and Damanhur, which lies west of the Rosetta branch of the Nile, not far from Lake Edku, are also big places. There are a number of towns ranging in population from five to ten thousand. The farms are nothing like those of the United States. We should have to change the look of our landscape to imitate them. There are no fences, no barns, and no haystacks. The country is as bare of such things as an undeveloped prairie. The only boundaries of the estates are little mud walls; and the fields are divided into patches some of which are no bigger than a tablecloth. Each patch has furrows so made that the water from the canals can irrigate every inch. The whole country is cut up by canals. There are large waterways running along the branches of the Nile, and smaller ones connecting with them, to such an extent that the face of the land is covered with a lacework veil of little streams from which the water can be let in and out. The draining of the farms is quite as important as watering, and the system of irrigation is perfect, inasmuch as it brings the Nile to every part of the country without letting it flood and swamp the lands. Few people have any idea of the work the Egyptians have to do in irrigating and taking care of their farms. The task of keeping these basins in order is herculean. As the Nile rushes in, the embankments are watched as the Dutch watch the dikes of Holland. They are patrolled by the village headmen and the least break is filled with stalks of millet and earth. The town officials have the right to call out the people to help, and no one refuses. If the Nile gets too high it sometimes overflows into the settlements and the mud huts crumble. During the flood the people go out in boats from village to village. The donkeys, buffaloes, and bullocks live on the dikes, as do also the goats, sheep, and camels.