CHAPTER V FELLAHEEN ON THEIR FARMS FOR the last month I have been travelling through the farms of the Nile valley. I have visited many parts of the delta, a region where the tour¬ ist seldom stops, and have followed the narrow strip that borders the river for several hundred miles above Cairo.

The delta is the heart of Egypt. It has the bulk of the population, most of the arable land, the richest soil, and the biggest crops. While it is one of the most thickly settled parts of the world, it yields more to the acre than any other region on earth, and its farm lands are the most valuable. 1 am told that the average agricultural yield for all Europe nets a profit of thirty-five dollars per acre, but that of Lower Egypt amounts to a great deal more. Some lands produce so much that they are renting for fifty dollars an acre, and there are instances where one hundred dollars is paid.

I saw in to-day’s newspapers an advertisement of an Egyptian land company, announcing an issue of two and one half million dollars’ worth of stock. The syndicate says in its prospectus that it expects to buy five thousand acres of land at “ the low rate of two hundred dollars per acre,” and that by spending one hundred and fifty thou¬ sand dollars it can make that land worth four hundred dollars per acre within three years. Some of this land 29