works, railroads, irrigating canals, telegraphs, etc., in advance of the necessity of the country. Great loss was incurred in the construction of the Suez Canal. The government became bankrupt about ten years ago, and England took charge of the country in the interest of the bondholders of the debt. The revenues of the country amount to about forty-eight millions, of which twenty-six millions are derived from a direct tax on land. A country so poor as Egypt can derive but little money from customs duties, which we well know fall not upon property, but upon consumption A people who go nearly naked, who sleep on the ground, and have no furniture in their huts, cannot easily be reached by indirect taxation. Salt and tobacco must be had by the poorest, and from these sources several millions are derived. A country without forests, mines or water power must be agricultural; and, though cotton is a very large and increasing crop, the only manufacturing that has ever been done in Egypt on a large scale is in the producing and refining of sugar.

The amount of arable land is about one-half of that in Ireland; but its productiveness ranks it far above that of Ireland. The agriculture of Egypt has been carried on in much the same way, and apparently without the least exhaustion of the fertility of the soil, for thousands of years.

The date of Mena, the founder of the city of Memphis, is now put by Egyptologists at about seven thousand years ago. The pyramids date back more than six thousand years. These and contemporary works indicate a civilization in which society was regulated by firm laws; a religion founded upon high morality; a perfected language and advanced literature; a knowledge of mechanics, engineering, chemistry, metallurgy; a people clothed in fine fabrics of linen. This development of social life carries mankind in this valley back to an age of the world misty in point of time; and, as agriculture was their means of living, we may well conclude that this narrow strip on each side of the Nile has been annually cropped for more than ten thousand years, - perhaps double that time. We know, from the innumerable representations in sculpture and color, depicting the ancient life of Egypt upon the walls of tombs, their methods

of living for about seven thousand years. Indeed, we know more about the life of ancient Egypt than of the lives of our British ancestors five hundred years ago, or than we know of the common affairs in Plymouth Colony in the first century of its settlement. We know about their government, religion, domestic and political economy; how they lived, loved, sported, worshipped and died. We not only have the monumental effigies of their kings, but we have many of their actual bodies in our museums; and the traveler, or "Cook's tourist," who visits the Boulac Museum at Cairo, may look in the face of the great Sesostris himself, who ruled the civilized world before Moses was born. We know how these mighty men went to war, the weapons with which they fought, the chariots in which they rode; the people they conquered, and how those people looked and dressed. We know how the ruler of the land received embassies, and how the embassadors looked and acted; what tributaries came with them from their wars, gracing with captive bands their triumphs; we see the gifts they brought, and the spoils of war. We know that the gay and rich gave great entertainments, and that even ladies at times drank wine until the lotus flowers drooped in their hot hands. But the history of Egypt, unlike the conventional history of other people, is not confined to the doings of the great. We see how the common people lived; how they ploughed, sowed, reaped, fished, fowled; how they gathered fruits, made wine or strung onions. In the tombs at Thebes there is scarcely an occupation of human life that is not delineated on the walls; and all indicates a busy, thrifty life and a superior morality, the reign of law and the equality of

woman.

At Beni Hassan, in the mountains, but a few days by boat from Cairo, there is a wonderful delineation of the life of Egypt, in spirited colored drawings, on the walls of beautiful tombs cut in the rock. These scenes delineate the lives of some distinguished people who were the hereditary governors of the province more than twenty-five hundred years before Christ. These pictures are fully described in Dr. Brugsch's works, and are largely copied in the illustrations of the works of Sir Gardner Wilkinson. They describe

many agricultural occupations, among them the culture of flax and manufacture of linen; fishing and catching wild fowl in nets. Ladies are represented entertaining company and playing the harp. These tombs are dated, and have many inscriptions. In the epitaph of one of the rulers he is made to say: "The hungry did not exist in my time even when there were years of scarcity; I ploughed all the fields and found food for the people, and I gave them what it produced; I gave equally to the widow, as to her who had a husband. I did not prefer the great to the humble. He who sowed was master of his crop, and I kept back nothing for myself from the produce of the lands."

This was good morality in the year 2500 before Christ, and would be now. It was some centuries after these tombs were made that we have the Bible record of Joseph and his brethren going from the arid plains of Palestine in time of scarcity to buy corn in the rich valley of the Nile. The seasons of scarcity in Egypt must have been caused by incomplete inundations of the valley, and are referred to as possible though of very rare occurrence.

The present race of Egyptians has the characteristics of the people whose forms and faces are sculptured and painted on the walls of temples and tombs, though crossed with the Arabian conquerer and then by the Turk. The purer and more ancient blood will always tell in a crossing of races, and this is noticeable in the frequent occurrence of the Egyptian type. They are a handsome race, with fine, oval faces and tawny complexion, rather of a bronze color; their hair is straight and black, eyes bright, straight noses, rather large mouths, and fine white teeth; they have very little beard. The work at the shadoof develops muscle, and they have fine forms and elastic and springing action. The women, from childhood, bring water in huge jars from the Nile, and this gives them a splendid development and graceful movement. They are patient, industrious, and as poor as any people on earth. Their houses are little huts, the walls of which are all made of the Nile mud baked by the sun. They need no roofs except for shade, and they get that by laying sorghum stalks across the walls. They sit and sleep on the ground floor; they have no doors or

windows except sorghum stalks, wattled together; no furniture except a few earthen jars and pots. They do not suffer for food, and only need fire for cooking. Bread made of millet or sorghum seed, with milk, cheese, eggs, vegetables, dates, etc., comprise the common food. They do not drink spirits; their luxuries are tobacco and coffee. Their dress is a plain blue cotton frock, from the neck to the knees. The men wear a turban of white cotton cloth; the women a dark scarf of camel's hair so disposed as to nearly cover the face. In cool weather the frock or robe is of woollen stuff of domestic make, the color of the brown sheep. They are usually barefooted; if shod they wear a slipper. The older people look worn, weary and discouraged. Four-fifths of the people are Mohammedans; of the remainder there are a few Jews, and about a million of ancient Egyptian Christians or Copts. The Jews and the Copts are by far the most flourishing inhabitants. They are the best educated, and for that reason have important employment under government. They have the best houses in the towns and cities.

The winter climate of Egypt is the finest in the world. The air is absolutely dry, and from November to March cool, sweet and bracing. In the early morning the glass shows about 50° Fahrenheit; this may rise at mid-day to 65° to 70°. Exercise on foot or riding camels or asses is never irksome; labor is performed with case, and all the natural conditions of life are favorable to man. The prevailing winds are from the north and west. The sun rises clear, and all day pursues his course through a cloudless sky, blue as that of Italy. The sunsets are more glòrious for beauty of color and golden light than those of the south of Europe. Fleecy clouds of vapor, of a transparent rose color, without shadow, float about the sunset. The sands of the Lybian desert reflect this glow, and all the air seems luminous. When the sun is gone, and dusk comes on, a green tinge mingles with the dark blue of the upper sky; then a strange return of light suffuses the heavens with a roseate flush. This heightens in the east and gradually darkens in the west, and then all fades into the night. At midnight the sky is ablaze with stars, and the brilliance of the night is beyond the power of description.

Dr. LORING.

Mr. RUSSELL.

What use is made of sorghum in Egypt?

It is used as fuel, and to make doors and roofs for their huts. The seed is fed to cattle and fowls,

and also ground and made into a coarse bread.

QUESTION. Did you ever taste the bread?
Mr. RUSSELL. Yes, sir.

QUESTION. Was it good for anything?

Mr. RUSSELL. It was sweet and wholesome bread. I never liked rye or Indian bread very well; and I think that I could have eaten as much of this, if it had been made clean and baked in a good oven, as I could of rye bread without butter.

Dr. LORING. Any sorghum sugar made there?

Mr. RUSSELL. There is no sugar made from sorghum in Egypt, from the fact that the sugar-cane grows abundantly upon planting. It is not a spontaneous growth, because the two or three months of inundation and the long drouths kill it. QUESTION. Did you drink any of the milk?

Mr. RUSSELL. Yes, sir; I drank the milk freely. I used to drink milk in the morning in my coffee, and I liked it. It had quite a strong taste. We got an abundance of cream, and apparently honest, clean-looking milk. I never went to see where it came from.

-

QUESTION. How wide is the portion that is inundated? Mr. RUSSELL. The valley of the Nile does not average, taking in the delta, — and the delta is something more than a hundred miles wide in places, the valley of the Nile, from the Mediterranean to the first cataract, does not average ten miles in width. Frequently it is not more than a rod in width. I have ridden over a plain of beautiful land, covered with crops, six or seven miles, until I came to the desert. The desert is always encroaching. The sands of the desert are blown towards the cultivated land, and gradually cover it if it is not kept out of the way, and irrigation properly provided for.

The Farmer is the Man that feeds us all" was then sung by Mr. George C. Rice, Mrs. G. A. Wason, and Mr. and Mrs. Fred Midgley. The audience manifested their pleasure by an encore, which was responded to by a duet from Mr. Rice and Mrs. Wason.