Rensselaer Republican, Volume 20, Number 3, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 September 1887 — THE RISE OF THE NILE. [ARTICLE]

THE RISE OF THE NILE.

Result ot tlie Overflow of Its Waters The Work of the Arab Parmer. When the time approaches for the inundation the Arab farmer is all expectancy, says a writer in Scribner’s Magazine describing the overflow of the Nile. His canajs are cleared and he protects his home by dikes and walls of adobe. This done, seated at his door, he watches with satisfaction and gratitude the rise and approach of the water which holds his little wealth. It is several months rising to its greatest height and then as slowly and gradually subsides. Then appears again to his delighted vision the husbandman’s farm. His palm-trees seem to rise to a greater reach and their waving branches add to the sense of calm and content which pervades all. Already his well-filled canals have deb fined themselves and his irrigating machinery is at once put in repair. There is no more use for The boat,- which have served to carry him from place to place during the inundation. They are hidden among the rushes on the banks of the canal. Every available person is now pressed into the service. If the thin deposit of mud left by the departing river is kept moist its value remains at par. If the Lot sun is allowed to play upon it unopposed it soon becomes baked and curls up into tiny cylinders, then breaking into fragments, it falls dead and worse than useless. Therefore the process of irrigation must begin at once. The rude sakiyeh and the ruder shadoof are kept going night and day and give employment to tens of thousands of the people and cattle as well, With these primitive appliances the water is lifted and emptied into the channels which have been dug or diked to receive it. From these larger receptacles the water is ledJo smaller ones, which, over flowing, cover the fields. In a little time than a Nile farm becomes a rare beauty-spot instead of a waste of mud, for now the crops are grown. The lentils bend with their heavy load and the fields of grain turn their well-filled heads from side to side that the ripening sun may change their green freshness into gold. What landscape unadorned by art can be more lovely than such a farm; narrow though its limits may be, with its grove of palms to fan the breeze and scatter their sweet fruitage in the lap of the happy fellahin? Here no weeds grow to annoy him. No stone crops are belched to the surface each year to stop the plow. And this is good, for the plow has no scientifically curved coulter or subsoil attachment. * .