Agriculture -- Egypt; Egypt -- Description and travel
Among other fruit trees seen here were some bearing long pods, called
_chiar shambar_ by the natives. The fruit of these trees, which is long
and green, but which turns black soon after picking, seemed at a
distance like a huge bean, suggesting that the fruit was akin to the
carob or locust bean, this idea being emphasised by the sweet glutinous
pulp in which the seeds were buried. This pulp is pleasant to the
taste, but slightly bitter, and is largely used by the natives boiled up
with water, as a drink on account of its medicinal qualities.
Taken all in all, the visit to the Khedive's farm was most attractive,
and pregnant with proofs of the fertility of the well-tended land, for
on every side were examples of the successful culture of many of the
agricultural products treated of in detail from the notes of the
student-like superintendent, who has all in his charge.
The place, as before said, may be regarded as a model and example of
what can be done with land that has been looked upon for ages as so much
desert, when all that was required was industry, application, and the
ingenuity necessary for extending the action of the Nile flood. Nature
has always been ready to do the rest.
The Khedive has another tract of farm land, which he purchased some time
back, about two kilometres from the estate just described, at Koubbeh.
This is Mostorod, where he has a simple-looking villa. On the way here
one of the first things that attract the attention of an Englishman is
that home-like contrivance so often missing in foreign countries--a
hedge dividing the fields from the roadway and separating them from each
other. These were unknown before the time of Abbas Helmi the Second,
and what may be done in time to come in the surroundings of farms by
means of the simple, well cut back hawthorn remains to be proved. Here
the shrubby growth, chosen for its neat form and comparatively rapid
development, is the bitter orange.
At Mostorod many of the surroundings are marked by the energetic
proceedings of the practical farmer. Here steam is at work, like the
patient slave it is, forming the motive power in one case for raising
water for all farming purposes, in another setting in action the mills,
which rapidly turn out and clean the meal ground from wheat and Indian
corn.
Buildings are here containing the various grains and seeds; others are
the storehouses for one or other of the three pickings produced in the
cultivation of cotton; and at the entrance of every building, just
inside the door, there is a pitch pine wood frame, with its glass
covering, and a paper on which is a record of the amount and nature of
whatever is brought in or taken out of the building in the shape of
corn, cotton, seed, or whatever may be stored.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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