This is also a great stock country. The Nile valley is peppered with camels, donkeys, buffaloes, and sheep, either watched by herders or tied to stakes, grazing on clover and other grasses. No animal is allowed to run at large, for there are no fences and the cattle thief is everywhere in evidence. The _fellaheen_ are as shrewd as any people the world over, so a strayed animal would be difficult to recover. Much of the stock is watched by children. I have seen buffaloes feeding in the green fields with naked brown boys sitting on their backs and whipping them this way and that if they attempt to get into the crops adjoining. The sheep and the goats are often watched by the children or by men who are too old to do hard work. The donkeys, camels, and cows are usually tied to stakes and can feed only as far as their ropes will reach. The sheep of Egypt are fine. Many of them are of the fat-tailed variety, some brown and some white. The goats and sheep feed together, there being some goats in almost every flock of sheep. The donkey is the chief riding animal. It is used by men, women, and children, and a common sight is the veiled wife of one of these Mohammedan farmers seated astride one of the little fellows with her feet high up on its sides in the short stirrups. But few camels are used for riding except by the Bedouins out in the desert, and it is only in the cities that many wheeled vehicles are to be seen. Suppose we go into one of the villages and see how these Egyptian farmers live. The towns are collections of mud huts with holes in the walls for windows. They are scattered along narrow roadways at the mercy of thick clouds of dust. The average hut is so low that one can look over its roof when seated on a camel. It seldom contains more than one or two rooms, and usually has a little yard outside where the children and the chickens roll about in the dust and where the donkey is sometimes tied. Above some of the houses are towers of mud with holes around their sides. These towers are devoted to pigeons, which are kept by the hundreds and which are sold in the markets as we sell chickens. The pigeons furnish a large part of the manure of Egypt both for gardens and fields. The manure is mixed with earth and scattered over the soil. Almost every village has its mosque, or church, and often, in addition, the tomb of some saint or holy man who lived there in the past. The people worship at such tombs, believing that prayers made there avail more than those made out in the fields or in their own huts.