CAIRO TO KISUMU inasmuch as it brings the Nile to every part of the country without letting it flood and swamp the lands.

Few people have any idea of the work the Egyptians have to do in irrigating and taking care of their farms. The task of keeping these basins in order is herculean. As the Nile rushes in, the embankments are watched as the Dutch watch the dikes of Holland. They are patrolled by the village headmen and the least break is filled with stalks of millet and earth. The town officials have the right to call out the people to help, and no one refuses.

If the Nile gets too high it sometimes overflows into the settlements and the mud huts crumble. During the flood the people go out in boats from village to village. The donkeys, buffaloes, and bullocks live on the dikes, as do also the goats, sheep, and camels.

The people sow their crops as soon as the floods sub¬ side. Harvest comes on within a few months, and unless they have some means of irrigation, in addition to the Nile floods, they must wait until the following year before they can plant again. With a dam like the one at Aswan, the water supply can be so regulated that they can grow crops all the year round. This is already the condition in a great part of the delta, and it is planned to make the same true of the farms of Upper Egypt.

As for methods of raising the water from the river and canals and from one level to another, they vary from the most modern of steam pumps and windmills to the clumsy sakieh and shadoof, which are as old as Egypt itself. All the large land owners are now using steam pumps. There are many estates, owned by syndicates, which are irrigated by this means, and there are men who are buying portable engines and pumps and hiring them out to the smaller 32