Agriculture -- Egypt; Egypt -- Description and travel
In disposition this peasant is contented, good-natured, not resentful,
and of good physique. He is also very untruthful, unreliable at his
work, lazy, cunning, and unconscionable as to the quality and quantity
of the task he is put to--in short, a thorough eye-servant. He requires
constant supervision, when he will do good work under a trying sun. He
promises fair, but performs badly. If he commits a fault and is
questioned as to how it happened, one can invariably depend upon his
telling an untruth. When working on his own plot he is most diligent,
but his methods are not always the best, and he does not get the full
benefit from the soil, owing to want of intelligence as to the rules of
good husbandry. On a large estate, should extra hands be wanted for a
special occasion, a hundred to two hundred men can be had on one night's
notice being given--a delightful state of affairs in cases of emergency,
though here the farmer does not often suffer from his hay or corn crops
being unharvested through the redundance of rain.
A large percentage of the fellaheen are perfectly illiterate, which
accounts for their want of readiness to take up the initiative. They
have no thirst for knowledge and love in agricultural matters to keep
running in the old rut. Exactness, tidiness, and pride in his work are
qualities very rarely found in a fellah. Slovenliness in the
performance of duties is characteristic of the paid day labourer, and to
a lesser degree when working on his own account. In Britain, for
instance, where do we find the breeder of stock who excels his
neighbours except in the shrewd farmer who, at great trouble and study,
and by patient experimenting, attains to success? Not only so, but he
is like the leaven which leaveneth the whole lump by raising the
standard of a district. The apathy of the fellah is shown in the lack
of breeding in horses, cattle, and sheep in Egypt, which is due to want
of selecting suitable sires, care in rearing, and the like.
The soil responds to thorough tillage in a marked degree, but too little
care is bestowed upon this question of cultivation, as the fellah is
prone to scamp his work and leave part of his land solid--that is, not
thoroughly stirred. When exposed to the sun the soil cracks and opens
into fissures, sometimes as wide as five inches. The fellah is often,
too, careless in providing a good bed for the seed, and irregular
germination is the result. If the land is judiciously watered and
timeously ploughed in a friable condition, it can be brought to a fine
tilth without much extra trouble. As it is all soil--nothing in the
shape of a bad subsoil exists, as in some parts of Great Britain--deep
cultivation is thoroughly beneficial, bringing, as it does, unexhausted
soil to the top. Generally in the preparation of the land for the
cotton crop, with its deep-searching roots, a depth of twelve inches is
attained.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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