Agriculture -- Egypt; Egypt -- Description and travel
Reports from the highest quarters supply abundant statistics of the
great advantage already manifested by the completion of the Nile
Barrage. The increase of land available for culture through the
conservation of the water that has always run to waste, and the
augmented powers supplied for irrigation by holding up such vast bodies
of water, have resulted in returns that are striking in the extreme, and
this after so short a time has elapsed since the sluices were completed
and the great dams put to the test. The value of land and rentals have
gone up, water has been utilised at earlier dates than were customary of
old, and everything points not only to stability but to a future for
Egypt such as could not have been dreamed of a score of years ago. In
connection, therefore, with its future prospects from an agricultural
point of view, and the encouragement given by the Government to those
who are disposed to enter upon a business career in this favoured
country, so as to bring to bear experience, the knowledge of culture,
and the use of improved implements to add vastly to Egypt's produce, a
short sketch of what has been done by one whose faith in the delta as a
vast agricultural centre has always been strong, will not here be out of
place.
We allude to the efforts made by his Highness the Khedive in acquiring
and reclaiming tracts of land in the neighbourhood of Cairo and turning
them into fertile farms.
A trip to one of these nearest to Cairo struck a visitor directly as
being hall-marked by the stamp "Progress," for it was reached by a
little model railway which skirts his Highness's estates. After leaving
the station, a short drive brings the visitor almost at once to a series
of scenes indicating careful management and model farming, though there
is much in it that is novel to an English eye, consequent on its being
contrived to suit the exigencies of an Eastern country where but little
rain is known to fall.
One of the first objects reached upon entering the cultivated land was
the great granary or store, composed of spacious erections of but one
storey high, low-roofed, and enclosing a large central square. In some
of these buildings were stored up sacks of corn, while in others lay
large heaps of the newly picked cotton, of whose cultivation more will
be said elsewhere.
The land around this highly cultivated domain is very fertile, and the
air exhilarating; and at present it is letting at the rate of 10 pounds
per feddan, which represents the Egyptian acre, something larger than
our own. This is the present price, for enterprise so far has done
little upon this side of Cairo in the shape of market gardening,
although the district is only twelve minutes by rail from the centre of
this important city, and one hour's distance for a walking horse and
cart.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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