CAIRO TO KISUMU origin, and then at a low bend in the river the water may be conducted out over the sands and create a cultivated patch three miles in width.

The Nile is so walled in by hills that its waters have to be lifted in order to flow over any level place. This is done chiefly by the sakiehs, of which there are something like four thousand on the Nubian Nile. The great wheels, moving in cogs, can be seen high up on the banks, with their strings of buckets hanging to them. As the buckets descend, each dips into the water and carries to the top a few quarts at a time. In some places men raise the water in baskets or buckets, and in others, the river slopes at such an angle that they carry it up by hand and water little patches twenty or thirty feet wide. Every low place along the river is farmed, and when the Nile falls, the sand banks and islands are planted to crops.

Wherever there is a stretch of cultivated land, a village of mud and stone huts has grown up, and such villages spot the banks for hundreds of miles. At times there is no green except between village and river, and one wonders how men can be born and live and die there. Neverthe¬ less, there are more than one hundred thousand people to whom this region is the centre of the world.

Though much of this Nile border is too narrow for profitable cultivation, it is very fertile and raises excellent cotton. At present the other chief crops are wheat, barley, and millet, and the chief fruit is dates, which are sweeter and larger than those grown farther down the Nile valley. Indeed, the date trees that one sees almost everywhere along the banks are a source of revenue for the government, which taxes them at the rate of ten cents per tree.

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