In Egypt the whole of the land belongs to the Pacha; besides himself there is no land-proprietor, and he has the absolute monopoly of every thing that is grown in the country. The following is the manner in which it is cultivated:--Portions of land are divided out between the fellahs of a village, according to their numbers; seed, corn, cotton, or other produce, is given to them; this they sow and reap, and of the produce seventy-five per cent. is immediately taken to the Pacha’s depots. The remaining twenty-five per cent. is left them, with, however, the power to take it at a price fixed by the Pacha himself, and then resold to them at a higher rate. This is generally done, and reduces the pittance left them about five per cent. more; from this they are to pay the capitation tax, which is not levied according to the real number of the inhabitants of a village, but according to numbers at which it is rated in the government books; so that in one instance with which I was acquainted, a village originally rated at 200, but reduced by the conscription to 100, and by death or flight to 40, was still obliged to pay the full capitation; and when I went there, 26 of the 40 had been just bastinadoed to extort from them their proportion of the sum claimed. After the capitation comes the tax on the date-trees, raised from 30 to 60 paras by the Pacha, and that of 200 piasters a-year for permission to use their own water-wheels, without which the lands situated beyond the overflow of the Nile, or too high for it to reach, would be barren. Then comes an infinity of taxes on every article of life, even to the cakes of camels’ dung which the women and children collect and dry for fuel, and which pay 25 per cent. in kind at the gate of Cairo and the other towns. Next to the taxes comes the _corvee_ in the worst form, and in continual action; at any moment the fellahs are liable to be seized for public works, for the transport of the baggage of the troops, or to track the boats of the government or its officers, and this without pay or reference to the state of their crops.