FELLAHEEN ON THEIR FARMS The whole of the delta is one big farm dotted with farm villages and little farm cities. There are mud towns everywhere, and there are half-a-dozen big agricul¬ tural centres outside the cities of Alexandria and Cairo. Take, for instance, Tanta, where I am at this writing. It is a good-sized city and is supported by the farmers. It is a cotton market and it has a great fair, now and then, to which the people come from all over Egypt to buy and sell. A little to the east of it is Zagazig, which is nearly as large, while farther north, upon the east branch of the Nile, is Mansura, another cotton market, with a rich farm¬ ing district about it. Damietta and Rosetta, at the two mouths of the Nile, and Damanhur, which lies west of the Rosetta branch of the Nile, not far from Lake Edku, are also big places. There are a number of towns ranging in population from five to ten thousand.

The farms are nothing like those of the United States. We should have to change the look of our landscape to imitate them. There are no fences, no barns, and no hay¬ stacks. The country is as bare of such things as an un¬ developed prairie. The only boundaries of the estates are little mud walls; and the fields are divided into patches some of which are no bigger than a tablecloth. Each patch has furrows so made that the water from the canals can irrigate every inch.

The whole country is cut up by canals. There are large waterways running along the branches of the Nile, and smaller ones connecting with them, to such an ex¬ tent that the face of the land is covered with a lacework veil of little streams from which the water can be let in and out. The draining of the farms is quite as impor¬ tant as watering, and the system of irrigation is perfect, 3i