CAIRO TO KISUMU The screech of these sakiehs is loud in the land and almost breaks the ear drums of the tourists who come near them. I remember a remark that one of the Justices of our Supreme Court made while we were stopping together at a hotel at Aswan with one of these water-wheels in plain sight and hearing. He declared he should like to give an appropriation to Egypt large enough to enable the people to oil every sakieh up and down the Nile valley. I doubt, however, whether the fellaheen would use the oil, if they had it, for they say that the blindfolded cattle will not turn the wheel when the noise stops.

I also saw half-naked men scooping up the water in baskets and pouring it into the little ditches, into which the fields are cut up. Sometimes men will spend not only days, but months on end in this most primitive method of irrigation.

The American farmer would sneer at the old-fashioned way in which these Egyptians cultivate the soil. He would tell them that they were two thousand years be¬ hind the time, and, still, if he were allowed to take their places he would probably ruin the country and himself. Most of the Egyptian farming methods are the result of long experience. In ploughing, the land is only scratched. This is because the Nile mud is full of salts, and the silt from Abyssinia is of such a nature that the people have to be careful not to plough so deep that the salts are raised from below and the crop thereby ruined. In many cases there is no ploughing at all. The seed is sown on the soft mud after the water is taken off, and pressed into it with a wooden roller or trodden in by oxen or buffaloes.

Where ploughs are used they are just the same as those of five thousand years ago. 1 have seen carvings on the 34