Identifier: upnilehomeagainh00fair (find matches)
Title: Up the Nile, and home again. A handbook for travellers and a travel-book for the library.
Year: 1862 (1860s)
Authors: Fairholt, F. W. (Frederick William), 1814-1866
Subjects:
Publisher: London, Chapman and Hall
Contributing Library: The Library of Congress
Digitizing Sponsor: The Library of Congress

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anlinessare alike strangers. Nor is the scenery much enlivened by thelistless groups seated under the walls, to bask in thewarmth of the noon-day sun; by the naked children,and half-starved dogs, dispersed among the rubbish ;by the cattle standing on the brink, or the buffaloesimmersed in the mud of the river, or even by thegraceful forms of the Arab women, filling theirjars at the all-bounteous stream. Excepting occasional exclamations, the perpetualgroanings of the unwearied sakias, turned by cattle,or the splashings of the water, raised by a successionof baskets worked by manual labour, are the onlysounds to be heard. Nor are many objects to beseen moving along the banks/ BOULAK TO MIXIEH. 99 The modes of needful irrigation alluded to arethe first novelties that meet the eye of a strangeron leaving Cairo. The sakia may be describedas a wheel, with cogs placed horizontally, and turnedon a perpendicular beam, to which a yoke for oxenis attached ; making the cogs, as they perambulate,
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turn an upright wheel, connected in its axle witha very large wheel at the edge of the river bank.Over this wheel passes a continuous double cord,to which earthen water-jars are tied at intervals;and which bring up water from the stream, emptyingit by the turn of the wheel into a trough, and then f 2 100 UP THE NILE. descending, month downwards, for a fresh, supply.The water thns raised passes from the trough intoa series of trenches, cut at right angles all over thefields or gardens. Each tiny stream has a dykeof its own ; and the earthen mound which preventsan undue amount of water from flowing over anyportion of the ground, may be allowed to do sowhen the husbandman pleases, by merely pressingit down, or pushing it aside with the foot. Thiscustom is alluded to in Deuteronomy xi. 10, whereMoses contrasts the promised land with the landof Egypt, from whence ye came out, where thousowedst thy seed, and wateredst it with thy foot,as a garden of herbs/ This machine was not anciently kno

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