— 155 REPORT V.

THE IREIGATION OF LANDS IN NATIYE OWNEESHIP.

A. F. NATHAN, Inspector of Irrigation.

The rainless areas of the Northern Sudan afford an agricultural problem which centres round the provision of water for the crops at the smallest possible cost. Following the lines of least resistance, the liative cultivator exploited from time immemorial the advantages attaching to the seasonal rise and fall of the Nile, and a large proportion of the cultivated area has always derived its irrigation directly or indirectly from the annual flood. Sand banks and mud flats, basins of low-lying land and the lower shelves of the river bank itself, exposed by the receding river, have been planted with quickly maturing crops and have furnished a livelihood to a considerable population.

Pressure of numbers, however, from time to time, drove the riverain tribes to irrigate lands lying above the flood level by means of primitive water-lifts, until a continuous belt of cultivation fringed both banks of the river, with a width determined by the radius of the elementary devices employed. Further progress could then only lie by way of improved methods and implements, and it is a noteworthy fact that local agricultural practice at the time of our recent occupation differed in hardly any detail from that depicted in the tombs of the Theban kings. A stationary population had been controlled by such positive checks as periodic famine, while isolation, internecine warfare and maladministration postponed the era of economic development.

To the benumbing influence of slavery may be attributed the retention of such anachronisms as the " shadoof " and the " sakia," and in the recent manumission of slaves may be found the stimulus necessary to the introduction of improved agricultural methods and labour-saving devices. The country's urgent need is for a large increase in the supply of free and skilled labour to develop the lands which will be rendered available for cultivation by modern engineering skill, and, in view of a general pacification, the control of epidemic disease and a system of famine relief, increase in the rural population will be determined directly by crop returns. The present report consequently reflects an effort to apply the results of local research to the dual object of increased production and the simultaneous education of agricultural labour.