MERICANS who visit Egypt know the country chiefly from the urban standpoint. They see through the eyes of the extremely polite dragoman who escorts them about the streets of Cairo or Alexandria. The man who sweats in the sun on his tiny farm is an entirely different creature. His scale of living is of the meanest.

The peasant population huddle in villages within the confines of four mud walls, homes which literally do not furnish them with a roof over their headswretched cabins improvised out of Nile mud, windowless as well as roofless. No modern pots and pans, none of the contrivances and shifts of modern times that go toward rendering life easy and comfortable, and which enable the foreman of a section gang on an American railroad to be better lodged, warmed, lighted, and served with news than was Queen Elizabeth of England.

We are accustomed to think of Egypt in terms of symbols-the Sphinx, Osiris, the Pyramids. The country has been a happy hunting ground for the archeologists, and their revelations turn us back through the abysms of time to the contemplation of mysterious figures of the past, whether a sacred bull or King Tutankhamen.*

A LAND WITH ONLY ONE NATURAL
RESOURCE

A country of wonders, no doubt; but to the writer's mind the wonder of wonders is not the ancient relics dug from the earth, nor the mighty works of men's hands erected upon its surface, but the soil itself that longish strip of green fringing the River Nile for the better part of one thousand miles.

* See "At the Tomb of Tutankhamen," by Maynard Owen Williams, in the NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE for May, 1923.

Let us, therefore, begin our narrative, after a manner of speaking, from the ground up. Nature has dealt in niggardly fashion with the land of Egypt. The country possesses no copper, no iron ore, no forests, no precious minerals, and no good steam coal. It is fairly exact to remark that the country lacks all the prime prerequisites of modern industrialism. Agriculture is virtually the sole source of national wealth. But even in this field the country is extremely limited.

Egypt is practically rainless and only one-twenty-fifth of the land is capable of cultivation. These fertile regions are sandwiched in between the Arabian and Libyan deserts. While the area of Egypt, not including the Sudan, is 350,000 square miles, or about eight times the size of the State of Pennsylvania, only a little more than 12,000 square miles are capable of cultivation.

Over this relatively small strip of habitable land the population swarms some 1,100 to the square mile, whereas the population of Belgium, the densest in Europe, is 652 to the square mile. Yet, despite all this, Egypt is probably the most perfect and extensive farming laboratory that the world has yet seen.

From an agricultural standpoint, the country presents a spectacle of three uniformities-climate, soil, moisture. Except for the region near the north coast, the country is rainless and frosts are unknown. The soil is the same, formed by the sediment from Nile water.

Now, uniformity is precisely the thing which the American farmer lacks. The main factor in crop yields is the weather. and the weather is always x, the unknown quantity. The Egyptian solves his farming equation by knowing the value of r before he starts.

With the American farmer, agriculture is more or less of gamble with Nature,

AM

MERICANS who visit Egypt know the country chiefly from the urban standpoint. They see through the eyes of the extremely polite dragoman who escorts them about the streets of Cairo or Alexandria. The man who sweats in the sun on his tiny farm is an entirely different creature. His scale of living is of the meanest.

The peasant population huddle in villages within the confines of four mud walls, homes which literally do not furnish them with a roof over their headswretched cabins improvised out of Nile mud, windowless as well as roofless. No modern pots and pans, none of the contrivances and shifts of modern times that go toward rendering life easy and comfortable, and which enable the foreman of a section gang on an American railroad to be better lodged, warmed, lighted, and served with news than was Queen Elizabeth of England.

We are accustomed to think of Egypt in terms of symbols-the Sphinx, Osiris, the Pyramids. The country has been a happy hunting ground for the archeologists, and their revelations turn us back through the abysms of time to the contemplation of mysterious figures of the past, whether a sacred bull or King Tutankhamen.*

A LAND WITH ONLY ONE NATURAL
RESOURCE

A country of wonders, no doubt; but to the writer's mind the wonder of wonders is not the ancient relics dug from the earth, nor the mighty works of men's hands erected upon its surface, but the soil itself that longish strip of green fringing the River Nile for the better part of one thousand miles.

*See "At the Tomb of Tutankhamen," by Maynard Owen Williams, in the NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE for May, 1923.

Let us, therefore, begin our narrative, after a manner of speaking, from the ground up. Nature has dealt in niggardly fashion with the land of Egypt. The country possesses no copper, no iron ore, no forests, no precious minerals, and no good steam coal. It is fairly exact to remark that the country lacks all the prime prerequisites of modern industrialism. Agriculture is virtually the sole source of national wealth. But even in this field the country is extremely limited.

Egypt is practically rainless and only one-twenty-fifth of the land is capable of cultivation. These fertile regions are sandwiched in between the Arabian and Libyan deserts. While the area of Egypt, not including the Sudan, is 350,000 square miles, or about eight times the size of the State of Pennsylvania, only a little more than 12,000 square miles are capable of cultivation.

Over this relatively small strip of habitable land the population swarms some 1,100 to the square mile, whereas the population of Belgium, the densest in Europe, is 652 to the square mile. Yet, despite all this, Egypt is probably the most perfect and extensive farming laboratory that the world has yet seen.

From an agricultural standpoint, the country presents a spectacle of three uniformities-climate, soil, moisture. Except for the region near the north coast, the country is rainless and frosts are unknown. The soil is the same, formed by the sediment from Nile water.

Now, uniformity is precisely the thing which the American farmer lacks. The main factor in crop yields is the weather. and the weather is always x, the unknown quantity. The Egyptian solves his farming equation by knowing the value of r before he starts.

With the American farmer, agriculture is more or less of a gamble with Nature,

whereas the Egyptian farmer bets on a certainty. Farming, therefore, in Egypt. comes nearer to being an exact science than in any other important country in the world.

Now, the test of an exact science is predictability. Astronomy is an exact science. An eclipse of the moon can be predicted to the minute many years ahead. The thing is possible because of mathematically ascertained uniformities covering the movement of planetary bodies in space. Given uniformity of soil, temperature, and moisture, the Egyptian farmer when he sows his seed can predict almost with astronomical exactitude the results of his harvest outturn.

THE WORLD'S PRINCIPAL PRODUCER OF

LONG-STAPLE COTTON

Another thing of great interest in Egyptian soil cultivation is the mobility agriculture had gained through the production of raw cotton for export. No purely farming country has ever become rich and prosperous until agriculture attains mobility.

By mobility is implied the capacity for exporting farm products in concentrated form. The Danish farmer has grown rich and prosperous by exporting concentrated foods, such as bacon, butter, and eggs, to the British market.* Egypt, through the transition from the old basin system to the perennial system of irrigation, has become the world's principal producer of long-staple cotton, and the export of this superior commodity has enabled two people to live in the Nile Valley where only one was able to live before.

In ordinary speech, there is always a tendency to personify Nature, to observe that Nature does this or that or works according to some well-ordered plan or design. While the thought is not exact, we can with some measure of truth speak of Nature's intentions about this planet and the life which flourishes upon its surface. For example, we may observe with truth that Nature never intended Egypt, a comparatively sterile and drought-beset country, to support from its soil its present population of nearly 14,000,000 people.

*See, also, "Denmark and the Danes," by Maurice Francis Egan, Litt. D., in the NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE for August, 1922.