In one considerable portion of the land of Goshen the sand is swept from south to north, while in another part, along the west bank of the Nile, at the north of Cairo, its direction is from east to west. But a great deal of the raising and drifting of the finer portions of the earth is dependent upon whether the wind be moisture-laden or the reverse. If the air be moist, a breeze blowing at the rate of, say, four miles an hour from the north will have no effect upon the deep dust, while one from the arid south, possessed of about half the other's force, will raise the almost impalpable soil in clouds. But, as elsewhere, now that Egypt is awakening from her long slumber, the sand is giving way to the soil. The correspondent of the _Morning Post_ gives some very terse and exhaustive accounts of the railway system now extending through the Delta, and dwells upon the fact that the agricultural light railways-- similar to the one mentioned earlier in these pages, made by the Khedive to his estates near Cairo--have been a distinct success, and he goes on to say that: The broad-gauge State railways of the Egyptian Delta may be roughly compared with the sticks of a fan. Converging at Cairo, the headquarters of the railway administration, and the goal of the provincial lines, the railways diverge to Alexandria, to Dessouk in the north of the Delta, on the Rosetta branch of the Nile, to Damietta, to Salahieh in the north-east, and to Ismailia. Several lines link the important towns on these branches; for example, Mansourah is connected with the Salahieh line, and a railway along the coast connects Alexandria and Rosetta; but large areas, notably in the crowded Menoufieh Province, in Beherah, and in the north-east of the Delta, lacked facilities for rapid transmission of goods and passengers to the larger towns served by the State lines until the advent of the agricultural railways. It would be unnecessary and unprofitable to enumerate all the agricultural lines which have been constructed in the last few years. Their distribution may be understood if, returning to the fan metaphor, they are regarded as threads running between and generally connecting the diverging sticks of the fan of State lines. So successful have these lines been that applications have been made for permission regarding the construction of fresh railways to extend in various directions for over another three hundred miles, most of these being in the Menoufieh Province, where desert land is being reclaimed. Mr Gunn's report gives the mileage covered since 1896, when the concessions were granted: In 1897 there were fifty-four miles of railway open, in 1899 430 miles, and in 1902 673. Within a year or two there will be at least one thousand miles open for traffic.