But the consequences on the life and habits of the people of this dearth of wood are not yet exhausted. It also puts difficulties in the way of their cooking their food. For instance, they cannot bake their bread as often as they would wish. A family may not have fuel enough to admit of the recurrence of this expenditure of it more frequently than perhaps a dozen times in the year. In order, therefore, to keep their bread sweet, they have to cut it into thin slices, and dry it in the sun. And to obtain a sufficiency of fuel, for even these restricted uses, they have to collect carefully, and to turn to account, everything that can be made to burn. As I have mentioned elsewhere, their chief resource for this purpose are the contributions they very thankfully receive from their herbivorous animals. A great part of the time of the women is spent in manufacturing this material into combustible cakes. And a shockingly dirty process it is. The raw material is deposited in a hole in the ground, together with a great deal of water. A woman, seated on the ground, on the brink of the hole, stirs up the material and water with her bare arms, which are immersed to beyond the elbow. This stirring is continued till a smooth fluid mixture has been produced, which is then left in this state, for the water to evaporate, and to drain off through the ground. When the material has in this way arrived at a sufficiently tough consistency it is made into thin cakes, which are set in the sun to dry. When this has been effected, they are stored away for use. As might have been expected, in the apportionment of domestic duties, this manufacture generally falls to the lot of the more ancient dames. Those, who are curious in tracing up to their sources the customs, and practices, of different people, may refer many other things that they will see, and some that they will not see, in Egypt, to this dearth of wood. In agriculture no carts, or vehicles of any kind, are used: there is no wood of which they might be made. It is, therefore, cheaper that everything should be carried on donkeys and camels. Here, when you see a tree, you are looking on what may be transformed into an essential part of the instrument of transportation. The cart, or waggon, and the animals that are to draw it, together form the complete instrument. In Egypt, when you see a bundle of chopped straw, and a field of lucern, you are looking on all, out of which the Egyptian means of land transportation are to be created. In Egypt, when a donkey has any shoes, they consist merely of a piece of flat iron, the size of the bottom of the hoof, cut out of a thin plate. It is easy to cut this out, but it would be expensive, where fuel is so scarce, to forge a shoe. This list might be very largely increased.