Rice is one of the chief foods of the Egyptian, and it is an excellent crop to grow on newly redeemed land, provided that water is abundant; for the soil is impregnated with salt, and after a few crops have been taken off the land becomes "sweet," in consequence of the perpetual flooding. It can then be cropped with clover and cotton, but requires much labour in the way of weeding, transplanting to fill up blanks, and attention to irrigation. After paying rent and working expenses the margin of profit is not great. The size of the plots ranges from half to one and a half acres. The patches are encircled by drains or ditches, which discharge into the main irrigating system. CHAPTER TWENTY. If armed with the little enterprise and capital necessary for making a commencement in farming or growing fruit and vegetables in Egypt for the market, a cultivator would find that land could be obtained within easy reach of the great towns of the Delta--Cairo and Alexandria--at a very moderate price; but it is only right to add that this price, consequent upon the great irrigation schemes in progress, is still rising by leaps and bounds. For the soil, where reachable by the flood waters of the Nile, now conserved and carried in every direction by irrigation canals, is practically inexhaustible, and, as previously stated, is often of great depth. The land is to be purchased with proper titles and registration, giving the necessary security to an alien who is desirous of making his home in the Delta, or rented, if preferred, at a moderate consideration, including water for irrigation. The country is well policed, there is freedom from contact with the inhabitants of the surrounding desert, and a cultivator would have to deal with a quiet, docile people, fairly industrious--that is to say, lovers of work after the fashion of the calm, placid Moslem, who takes life as it is, and seems to make it one of his tenets that there is no need to hurry. He possesses none of the hurry and rush of Western civilisation; but, on the other hand, he is patient, ignorant, fairly teachable, and willing to work for exceedingly moderate daily payment. The supply of this labour under a kindly, solvent, and honestly paying master is abundant and never fails. The illustrations of the fellaheen farm labourers and their wives are typical of the class of people with whom he would have to deal, and if the new adventurer objected to the class of hut they occupy, and had lofty ideas about model dwellings and the introduction of lighter implements in place of the clumsy, adze-like hoes with which they are armed rather than furnished, the advice given to him would be to follow that of the old Latin proverb, "Festina lente," and go by degrees in that, as in most of the other matters of culture, for it takes time to alter custom and change old-fashioned routine.