Rensselaer Union, Volume 9, Number 43, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 July 1877 — The People of Egypt. [ARTICLE]

The People of Egypt.

A tourist who has been traveling through Egypt thus writes to the Philadelphia Press on tbe condition of the people : “ Egypt in the possession of England would be one of the richest countries in the world, surpassing even the luxuriant wealth and productive inexhaustibility of the age of the Pharoahs. The Delta would be turned into a vast cotton-grow-ing region, and from the mouths of the Nile to the Cataracts the prolific soil of this teeming land of fertility would overrun with fatness. Left to pursue their occupations no longer subject to cruel eorsees, by which the population of entire villages are decimated, with an enlightened and humane Government, rendering life and property perfectly secure, the population of Egypt would increase with wonderful rapidity. Mesopotamia in its best days might be eclipsed. The Fellahs, or agricuJta/al laborers of Egypt, are in no better condition than were the same class in the Pharonic eras. They toil irom morn till night for a few pennies, with no covering but a fold of cotton about the loins, unsheltered from the African sun, wretchedly led, and housed at night in hovels that resemble more pigpens than human habitations. With all their privations and hardships, the Fellahs are a good-natured, cheerful race, of kind dispositions and happy temperaments. The Khedive is apprehensive of English designs. He fears an armed occupation of Egypt by British troops, and its eventual incorporation in the AngloIndian Empire. Should the Turkish Empire break up his apprehensions may be realized, for England would certainly claim Egypt as her share of the spoils, and uone could dispute her power to assert her pretensions. The Khedive could make no fight, for he would be assailed on all sides, and he has nothing in the shape of a navy but a few wooden vessels.”