of acres. Of these, 200,000 lie in a strip extending for eighty miles along the banks of the Nile to a point about twenty miles above Minieh; 50,000 are situated above Luxor; 76,000 are in the Fayoum; and the rest in Lower Egypt. On this land there are 375 miles of agricultural railway, the plant, rolling stock, and appurtenances of which are valued at about a million sterling. There are nine sugar-mills in operation, and three in full working order, but these latter are closed for want of a sufficient supply of cane. These mills are valued at about £200,000 apiece; and there is one which is not quite finished, but the building materials for it are all on the spot. Besides the sugar, there are sundry cotton-mills, which are not at work. The ex - Khedive is responsible for all this extravagance of investment in machinery; and it is melancholy to see the quantity of good material, of great value, lying about the fields, which is destined never to be used. Huge iron wheels, boilers, cylinders, fragments of steam-ploughs, seem to strew the country; while the long iron funnels of the sugarfactories disfigure it. If these returned a

large profit on the expenses of working them, it would be some consolation; but at present the Daira lands do not do much more than pay their expenses, together with the charges upon them, and in some years do not do that. This is to some extent due to defective cultivation. The furrows in which the cane is planted are not nearly deep enough; the rows, unlike those I have seen in the Southern States of America, are single instead of double, and are only about half as far apart; and the cane is not banked up. The present administration has no doubt much to contend with. First, it has the legacy of all the corruption and evils which tainted every department under the late Government, and these were especially rife in the Daira Sanieh, which offered an exceptionally good field for plunder ; then it has to bear the pressure of the bondholders, who cannot wait for a process of reform, or submit to the trying of experiments which are incidental to a new system, but which must of necessity take time and money. It may be that by degrees these experiments may be introduced; for there can be no doubt that, with certain changes in the

present system, and a judicious expenditure of capital, especially on irrigation works, the Daira Sanieh property might be made to yield a very large return. It is due to Ismail Pasha to acknowledge that he planned a system of irrigation which possesses great merit, and which only requires to be perfected to confer a still greater benefit upon the country than it already does. With a view of completely controlling and utilising to their fullest extent the waters of the Nile, he constructed the canal known as the Ibrahimieh Canal, which is called after his son. It runs parallel with the Nile, and generally within a mile distant from it, and extends from a little above Rhoda to Beni-Suef. It was originally intended to carry it into the Nile below that place, but instead of this it dwindles away to nothing, and the canal to a great extent fails to do the work for which it was designed, and be a large fullflowing river throughout its whole course. One of the most important public works awaiting accomplishment is the completion of this canal. In addition to this most valuable adjunct to the system of irrigation, the late Khedive built a huge dike, also extending

from Rhoda to Beni-Suef, a distance of more than a hundred miles; and the land between the Ibrahimieh Canal and this dike, on the other side of which is the level watered by the Bahr Youssef, forms the finest cultivable area of the western bank of the Nile for that distance. It is divided into basins, into which the water is conducted by the canal. These basins store the inundation for as long a time as is required, and the ceremony of opening the sluice-gates to admit the water from one mudirate to another is quite an imposing function. The two mudirs meet at the gate, and the one formally hands over the water to the other, who signs a written receipt for it. The only natural overflows which now take place are that of the waters of the Nile over the narrow strip on its right bank, and that of the Bahr Youssef, which runs behind the dike. The whole of the rest of the country is divided into basins which are flooded as desired; and the impression of one's youth, therefore, that the whole country was submerged at once by uncontrolled inundation is erroneous. It is a question whether this plan of storing the water and allowing it to

stagnate before it is led on into other basins, does not deprive it of its fertilising qualities, as it necessarily has not so much mud to deposit as the constant fresh supply that came down with the natural overflow. This would not be the case if the Ibrahimieh Canal was finished, as the waters would then run off, and the fresh flood could be carried over the land. As it is, the stagnation of the water produces infiltration, which causes the saline properties in the soil to rise. Partly owing to this cause, partly to the exhausting qualities of sugar-cane and the neglect of a proper rotation of crops, and partly to the deleterious effects in the long-run of the nitrous soil that is excavated from the old mounds and used as manure,— the land will lose much of its productive capacity ere long, unless steps are taken to remedy these evils. Altogether, the system not only of irrigation but of cultivation might without much difficulty be improved; and there can be no doubt that the introduction of foreign enterprise and capital would develop the resources of the country with far greater rapidity and success than a Government department can do it, however well ad