The Khedive's Country Part 6

It is the reverse in Egypt, where its use is general, whether as a cooked vegetable, pickled, or in its raw state. It demands a rich, deep soil, and is raised in both varieties, white and black, for use in summer and autumn, and proves to be very profitable to the grower.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN.

Perhaps the most successful vegetable that has been introduced into England is the tomato. Forty or fifty years ago a punnet or two of the attractive vivid scarlet fruit might be seen in season at Covent Garden Market. They were known as "love-apples," and probably were bought and consumed; but their growth into favour was very slow before becoming a fashion, and, with most people, an acquired taste. The tomato forms a summer production of the English market gardener, who is rivalled by the growers of the Channel Islands; and it is sent into market daily by the ton; while, when the inclemency of our climate renders firing absolutely necessary, the enterprising growers of the Canaries keep up the supply.

Flourishing so well just off the west coast of Africa, it is only natural that the tomato should find a congenial home in the fertile East of the great Continent, and it is extensively grown with increasing success in Egypt.

As an example of the tomato being treated as a profitable crop, here is an instance of what has been done in the way of market gardening in the district of Alexandria, and may be done again by those persevering cultivators who are struggling to make a moderate living.

A father and two grown-up sons may rent a plot of land of, say, four acres in extent, the rent of which perhaps reaches ten pounds per annum, the gardener having to raise water for irrigation purposes.

The occupation of the land would commence on the first of August. The soil may be cla.s.sed as pure sand, which naturally requires a liberal application of farmyard manure. The ordinary tillage having been carried out, the cultivator begins by transplanting seedling tomatoes about the beginning of September. Not being prepared to plant the whole of his four acres with tomatoes, he sows on another part vegetable marrows, which in this hot climate are ready for plucking in six weeks, the plants continuing to bear for a month; while directly this supply is finished another crop of marrows may be sown on the same land.

Meanwhile, the tomatoes are pushing forward to be ready by the first of January at a time when the price is generally good, though probably in no other vegetable is there so great a variance in the amount it will fetch, dependent, of course, on the scarcity or plentifulness of the crop.

It will be news, probably, for the British grower when he reads that the wholesale price of tomatoes in Egypt varies from one farthing to fivepence per pound. Perhaps he may open his eyes a little wider when he reads that a fair estimate of the gross return from growing tomatoes for the market supply of Alexandria will vary from ten pounds to fifty pounds or more per acre; and, of course, this is in the open ground, forming an almost immediate return, and with no preliminary outlay for gla.s.s houses.

But there are always drawbacks in gardening; and one of these, which may occasionally mar success, is caused on this land so near the sea by the fogs. These, if they attack this delicate plant, so famous here at home for developing aphides and fungoid diseases, like their unfortunate relatives the potatoes, destroy the leaves, blacken them, hinder the setting of the blossom, and generally reduce the crop.

Several men have been known to engage in this cultivation in the neighbourhood of Alexandria during the last five years, and apparently they have financially improved their position.

Leaving the aristocratic tomato and turning to its poor relative the potato, it might have been hoped that in such a hot, sandy land as Egypt, where thousands of acres offer the same facilities, and are made as rich and fertile as the famous warp-land potato tracts of north Lincolnshire and south Yorkshire, a home would have been found where it would flourish free from disease.

Unfortunately, the information to be given to the horticultural or agricultural grower upon this point is not good; in fact, quite sufficient to make the writer suggest that it should be a crop to be left alone.

Certainly potato growing is tempting; the cultivation is simple, the crops heavy and very profitable _if_--this is a very large "if," and means so much, especially connected with weather and disease.

Experience of long years employed in gardening and farming in Egypt suggests that if the cultivation of the potato is entered upon it is best to be grown on the farm or by large market gardeners.

Good quality potatoes, such as are marketed in England, are rarely found in Egypt. The crop is generally grown from "seed" imported from France and Italy, and a sandy soil is chosen. Two crops, however, can be taken from the land per annum. The first is planted in October, and should be ready for lifting in the beginning of February, a period of five months; the second, planted in February, is ready for harvesting in June--the duration of time for the crop to be on the land, one hundred and ten days. It sounds novel to a British grower to speak of a winter and a summer crop of potatoes, two crops in the year; but this is so, and the winter may yield three tons per acre, while the summer produces five to six; while the current price per ton returned to the grower is about seven pounds. As this is the most popular of vegetables, and the demand always so great for good, well-grown new potatoes, experiments have been tried for raising these in the neighbourhood of Cairo and sending them packed in boxes to arrive in England, when they would be eagerly bought up in the market as luxuries, at the beginning of March.

Here are the returns of the experiment. From fifteen to eighteen pounds per ton were realised; carriage, freight, and other expenses amounted to three pounds per ton, leaving a margin of profit over the price in Egypt of from five pounds to eight pounds sterling. Enough this to make the Delta worthy the name of a land of promise, and especially more so when it can be, and is, announced that it is a country where there is no potato disease. In exceptional cases, however, there is the drawback of cold weather, which r.e.t.a.r.ds the growth of the winter crop.

Another objection is that all the seed potatoes--and these are heavy of freight--have to be imported, as storing throughout the summer is impracticable.

It is only fair to say, however, on behalf of our good old mealy friend, the familiar object of every man's table, that in his guise of a foreigner--an African--he will be much better if he is let alone and not subjected to the tricks of trade, which recoil upon and tend to spoil his character. For in the harvesting of the crop a bad practice has arisen with the Egyptian market gardener, who generally carries on his operations in the neighbourhood of some irrigation ca.n.a.l connected with the Nile, where he has, so to speak, abundance of conserved water always on tap ready to give his fields a heavy watering. This he bestows upon his potatoes just before turning them out of the ground, as he finds that it greatly increases the weight of the tubers; but it spoils their quality, and makes them what a Londoner calls "waxy," and a north countryman "sad."

One ought not to close one's list of garden or farm productions without adding the names of a few so-called spices, or flavour-producing plants, which are always in steady demand and flourish well in the valley of the Nile. Among these are the capsic.u.m, the green and the red, which are most easy of culture, and come to maturity rapidly with the same treatment as is accorded to the tomato. There is also the lesser kind, or chilli; the caraway famous for its seeds, the coriander, and dill; while as to the familiar mustard, it hardly asks for cultivation at all, but grows rapidly and ripens well, while the seed, when ground into the familiar condiment, is pungent and aromatic in the extreme.

As is well-known, a fine cla.s.s of tobacco is grown pretty largely in the Delta. It is wanting in the strength of the kinds raised in the West Indies and the United States. It is excelled, too, in potency by the products of the East Indies; but it is of a very delicate flavour and much liked, though not so popular as that of Turkey in Europe and Asia.

But this is partially due to want of usage on the part of smokers, who are not accustomed to the pungency and fine aroma which appertain to the Egyptian tobacco as compared with the Turkish. But the North African is remarkably good all the same, and flourishes splendidly, there always being abundance of sunshine at the picking time and excellent opportunity for _haying_ the crop. For, after all said and done, a great deal of the aroma of tobacco depends upon the fermenting process it goes through in being dried and pressed, just as a well-made crop of gra.s.s, hay, or clover, is dependent upon the skill of the farmer and his choice of weather.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN.

Supposing an enterprising personage to have taken up a tract of the desert of, say, one hundred acres in Egypt, where divisions must not be looked for in the way of fence or hedge, but dependence placed upon the irrigating drain, it will be as well to give a list of the farm implements he would require, and their cost--always presuming that he is prepared to be content, certainly at first, with the ordinary contrivances of the country, which are rough, but very cheap.

Necessaries are given here, and nothing more; while the accompanying ill.u.s.trations spread through the text afford a very good idea of the objects that will become familiar upon his pioneer land.

Four native ploughs, exceedingly rough in construction, for tickling the soil that is to laugh with a harvest, their cost about ten shillings each; a baulk wood, to be drawn by oxen, mules, or donkeys, over the yielding surface and act the part of a roller, six shillings; a ridging box, for preparing the land for potatoes or sugar-cane, two shillings; two sc.r.a.pers, eight shillings; chains, six shillings; one lorry, five pounds; two box carts at four pounds each; two threshing norags at eight pounds each; total, thirty-two pounds ten shillings.

Of course, it is open to the man of enterprise to invest in the different ingenious contrivances of the British agricultural implement maker, such as the admirable invention the Patent Turn-Wrest Plough, invented by Mr Thomas Wright, whose experience in the cultivation of the Khedive's land resulted in his bringing to perfection an implement exactly suited to Egyptian needs.

The list given above names all that is absolutely necessary in a country where the tiller of the soil is so munificently aided by the almost incessant sunshine and abundant water.

But the farm implement _par excellence_ of the fellaheen, the tool which is to him what the shovel is to the British navvy, an instrument with which nearly everything in the way of moving the soil can be done, is the fas, the broad-headed hoe seen carried by the two fellaheen labourers in the engraving accompanying this chapter. It is one of the first inventions of the cultivator, and not so very far removed from its pierced flint representative occasionally turned up amongst the weapons and tools of primitive man; but when bronze, and later on iron, began to yield to the inventor, and the action of fire was utilised by the Tubal Cains of their day, the broad-headed hoe began to develop; and we have it spread, in a very similar form to that still used in Egypt, all round the world where men commenced to till the soil. For we see it to this day very similar in shape in those two vast agricultural countries, India and China, while in Egypt it is handled by the fellaheen labourer in a way which is beyond praise.

The native plough, as seen by the photographic reproduction, is a very primitive implement, the date of whose invention must be sought for by an examination of some of the characteristic gravings in marble to be found in the Egyptian tombs, where the pursuits of the old-time inhabitants are recorded in a style that is absolutely wondrous.

It consists of a pole of wood measuring about ten feet in length, which is strongly bolted to the sole or body of the plough. This soie, which measures three feet, is shod with a share resembling a pointed shovel.

The end of the pole is attached by a rope to the yoke, which lies across the necks of the bullocks, buffaloes, or even camels--as seen in the case of the Norag, drawn round and round over the threshing-floor--which are utilised by the Egyptian cultivator according to his means, while the labourer guides the plough by the aid of an upright handle. This implement does not turn over the soil, and may be properly cla.s.sed as a one-tined cultivator. There is a quaintness and old-world look, as shown in the photographs, in the mixture of forces, a huge buffalo bull being mated with a small native ox, a bullock with some fine-grown a.s.s, while cows are frequently yoked together to help and drag the light plough. Whether horses of the type of our heavy, slow-going farm breed will finally work their way to the front remains to be seen; but at present they have hardly begun to oust the old-world yokes of strangely a.s.sorted beasts from the turning up of the soil. It is more probable, unless the fuel difficulty stands in the way, that the larger tracts will be further brought into cultivation by means of steam and the deep subsoil ploughs which do such an immensity of work in a single day.

As will be noted in the description, the modern native plough is single stilted, and it might be supposed in a country like this that such an implement had been in use ever since the plough's invention; but as in many other records that have been unearthed, engraven in stone in the wonderful pictorial writings found in temple and tomb, we have proof that this was not always the case; for in the days of the agricultural King Ti, who is supposed to date back to the Fifth Dynasty, that is some five thousand years in the dim past, there is a representation of a plough in use with two handles, very much the same in shape as those brought out quite lately and known as the "American chilled," these being guided in our own old familiar way.

The Baulk wood used as a harrow or roller is drawn by two bullocks, and answers its purpose in smoothing the very sandy soil fairly well.

The Ridging Box, or Baitana, is used for raising low ridges on the flat to retain the water for irrigation purposes.

The Sc.r.a.per is a box with two handles for levelling high land and earning the sand to lower portions.

The Norag is a ma.s.sive frame fitted with three or four axles, upon which are fixed steel discs twenty inches in diameter and with four or five discs alternately on each axle. This is drawn by a pair of bullocks over the cut grain till it is threshed out. This implement is, by long proof, most effectual in its action, for when drawn over the grain sheaves it acts in a two-fold way, loosening the ear, or, in the cases of some leguminous crops, the pods--and, of course, vastly helped by the treading of the oxen's hoofs--so that the grain falls through right to the bottom and is covered by fresh quant.i.ties, sheaves, or the like, of the crop that is being threshed. Its second action is that the edges of the discs are constantly bruising and half cutting the straw or stalks, which in a dry season or from want of effective irrigation are often hard and woody. It must be understood that the straw is not used; as in England, for litter, but as the most important food for cattle, and this action of the Norag, with its sharp discs, so bruises and chops up the straw that it becomes softened in its harshness, and far better for the animals to which it is supplied for food. In fact, during the time when it is most supplied to the cattle, which is during the summer or least abundant season, it is a work of necessity to make it more attractive to the animals, this bruising and cutting bringing forth the flavour of such juices as still remain in the plant, making it slightly aromatic and certainly more palatable as food.

We in England have not been ignorant of the value in cattle feeding of endeavouring to give some zest to the coa.r.s.er kinds of fodder which economy necessitates in the case of the British farmer. Poor hay, musty grain, consequent upon a bad harvest, and unsatisfying chaff, are eaten by unfortunate cattle, which, suffering as it were from Hobson's choice of having that or none, eat the provender supplied without protest; but Nature resents it for them, and they show it in their poor condition.

Of course, in the case of a well-bred horse the matter is different; he snuffs at and blows upon the untempting contents of his manger, and then turns away in disgust from that which his cloven-hoofed companions patiently chew.

But in many a case this damaged grain, hay, or straw has been made attractive by a sprinkle of one of the savoury cattle foods that were invented and imitated some forty or fifty years ago, a portion of the ingredients in one kind consisting of the broken up and stickily sweet locust bean and the contents of its pod, with a dash of the bitter and aromatic fenugreek. But in Egypt, where the rain does so little towards injuring the straw or stalk, such musty fare seldom falls to the lot of the native cattle, while this chopped or bruised straw, the _tibn_ already mentioned, is constantly prepared at the time of threshing by the action of the ingeniously constructed Norag.

No one can see the spot laid down for the reception of the harvest produce in Egypt--so much hard-beaten earth upon which the peas, beans, or grain of various sorts are thrown, ready for the oxen to drag over it this peculiar revolving wheeled or disked implement--without being reminded of the place where the plague was stayed--the threshing-floor of Araunah the Jebusite; nor can he help comparing the native plough, that simple scarifier, with antique agricultural tillers of the soil depicted on the most ancient sculpture or penned in olden ma.n.u.scripts, as in use by ancient nations as well as by our Saxon ancestors. The ploughs of the West many, many centuries back are almost precisely the same as those we see in the Egypt of to-day, save in the cases where he who drives the plough has to deal with a hard and heavy earth crust far different to the light and sandy soil of Egypt, whose labourer guides a plough with one hand; for in one antique representation of ploughing the labourer steers the agricultural implement with his left and wields in his right a heavy axe, whose purpose is to break the clods prior to the pa.s.sing of the implement he steers.

Ingeniously constructed, but that is all that can be said of the native threshing machine, for amongst the poorer cla.s.s cultivators its manufacture is almost inconceivably rough, and clumsy in the extreme.

No verbal description could compete with that afforded by the photo-engraving that accompanies these pages, depicting, as it does, the rough, effective implement, its attendants with their quaint forks and rakes, and, above all, the driver, who adds his weight to the farming implement and shoulders his very merciful speed-inducing wand for the benefit of his mixed yoke. This is, of course, an awkward team, but not infrequent; and the Egyptian farmer who first attempted this application of force must have been as eccentric as he was ingenious when he coupled on either side of such a rough pole a patient camel and a native bull.

But somehow, and by a careful division of labour and adjustment of the yoke, the two patient beasts may be seen plodding on round and round the smooth, level, modern representative of the old Biblical threshing-floor. The more regular yoke attached to the Norag, which from its cutting and bruising qualities has been translated by the French "Hache paille," or chop-straw--this bears astounding similarity to the "whop-straw" shared by the old-fashioned British bucolic with his flail--is seen in the other photograph of the pair of native cows, though very frequently it is drawn by a yoke of oxen, by the big, clumsy buffaloes, or even by a yoke consisting of one of each, the oxen taking the palm for their st.u.r.diness and staying power. This mode of threshing and bruising and chopping the straw is carried out in a similar mode in parts of India.

Here though these old ways are giving place to the use of modern machinery, which is readily adopted by the Egyptian, who naturally does not find in the threshing machine the old failing complained of by the British farmer, to wit, that it bruised and broke up the straw, rendering it unfit to use as thatching or to make into the neat, pale golden trusses once so familiar in the market.

There is, however, an unpleasant feature in the native threshing in connection with the samples of corn. As may be supposed, when the threshing is at an end and the _tibn_ stacked, or rather piled in a heap, leaving the grain to be shovelled up, no amount of winnowing and sifting can remove from it a certain amount of sullying brought about by the constant trampling of the oxen.

This has, in the past, acted inimically to the success of the fine, hard, dry, shot-like grain of Egypt in foreign markets; but in these days of advance not only has the bullock-worked European threshing machine made its way into the Egyptian fields, but it is no uncommon thing for the pleasant hum of the steam thresher to be heard where the ingenious machinery of England is carrying on its untiring labour of threshing out, winnowing, and filling its sacks of grain, as much at home as if it were upon some Yorkshire or Lincolnshire farm.

It will not be out of place, after dealing with the Egyptian _tibn_, to state here that experienced cultivators have found the advantage of carefully feeding their working bullocks so as to obtain for them the good, sound stamina which will be naturally followed by the best amount of work. This they find by sprinkling amongst the chopped straw or _tibn_ supplied about one-third in weight of beans, not crushed or ground, but either whole or split; for it has been noticed that the draught animals flourish better upon this food than upon bean meal; while the process of splitting, Mr Wallace states, saves the bean from the attack of one of the Egyptian farmer's minor plagues--the weevil; for, as if governed by some wondrous instinct in their preparations for the continuation of their species, and a desire to ensure for them good wholesome food upon which to feed, these creatures do not lay their eggs in damaged grain.

Of late years many of the European implements have been introduced-- Ransomes' threshers and straw--bruisers, one-way or balance ploughs, harrows, clod-crushers, horse-hoes, Norwegian harrows, spring-tooth cultivators, steam ploughs and cultivators, mowers, reapers, and binders, maize-sh.e.l.lers, seed graders, broadcast-sowing machines, and seed drills.

European ploughs, as they invert the earth, are naturally the most beneficial to the growth of the crop, as by bringing the under-soil to the surface to receive benefit from the sun and air, they greatly improve the root range of the plants.

Steam ploughing is gradually gaining in favour, owing to the scarcity of work-bullocks. A few of the large proprietors have recently purchased plants or entire gear. The scythe for cutting clover has been found, too, a great improvement upon the antique native fashion of pulling by hand, the saving of expense being seventy per cent. But a great drawback to the adoption of European implements is the aversion of the Egyptian farm labourer to any innovation, his want of intelligence in handling what to him appears complicated machinery, and his unwillingness to learn. Here, though, in common justice it must be said that he does not stand alone, for the experiences of the British farmer in most of our counties, and his battles with the pig-headed conservatism of his men, would form an amusing chronicle. The clumsy implement of his forefathers, invented, historians say, some five thousand years ago, is in the native's eyes perfectly right, and could not be better; and he prefers to go on blistering or hardening his hands in what he looks upon as the good old ways, until he is forced to handle modern machines, and then by very, very slow degrees he begins to see, but not before he has broken many, or put them out of gear. But unfortunately the farm labourer is not the sole offender, as the history of the introduction of mechanism of any kind will tell.