piastres are the humble guerdon of the long day’s labour. You can calculate upon the fellah as you could on a machine. But, in spite of it all, deep down in his soul lies the sentiment which redeems him and distinguishes him from a mere machine—his absorbing love for the soil. Take him away, set him to other tasks—to serve, for instance, in the army—he will perform his duties with the same unfaltering regularity and docility; but all the time he is thinking in his heart of the black soil and the water of Egypt. In Omdurman I asked a more than usually intelligent Egyptian soldier, who had been told off to perform some small services for me, ‘Do you like being in the army?’ Without hesitation came the answer, ‘No.’ ‘What do you want to do?’ ‘I wish to be at home,’ he said, ‘and cultivate the ground.’ With a single shadoof water can be lifted 2½ metres; but when the bank is high a second or third tier of shadoofs is employed, and in some places as many as five shadoofs may be seen lifting the water from one level to another, till it reaches the fields. One man working twelve hours a day can lift enough water to irrigate an acre of cotton or corn in ten days. The sakieh, or Persian water-wheel, consists of a vertical wheel with a string of buckets attached to it, which, as the wheel turns round, are let down into the water, come up full, and discharge their contents into a channel as they come to the top. The wheel is turned by means of spokes, which catch in a horizontal wheel worked by oxen, buffaloes, or some other beast of burden. If the lift is high, the string of buckets may be very long; but if the wheel itself dips into the water, there may be no string at all, and it is then called a taboot. The buckets are often earthenware pitchers, and the wheels themselves are generally of the rudest construction, and made of palm wood; but new and improved iron water-wheels are coming into use. Still, whether of iron or of wood, they all seem to make the same peculiar sing-song whine. There is no sound more characteristic of Egypt. It has a peculiar penetration. Night and day it continues. I believe Egyptian music is founded upon it. The fellaheen say the cattle will not work unless they hear it. Certainly when one stops, the other stops also. In the Fayoum, where, owing to the difference in the levels, the canals have often a very high velocity, there are very ingenious water-wheels or turbines, which play the part of sakiehs, but are turned by the force of the current; the water thus lifts itself continuously.