carrying drinking-water for sale, because it is hot walking about and
people get thirsty. Others will be selling sweet-stuff made of sugar,
which everyone likes. Others wait about ready to write letters for
people who cannot write for themselves, and there are always many
beggars. Great steamers from other countries--England, France, India,
Japan--bring merchandise to Alexandria and Port Said, the seaports of
Egypt, and so people from these countries have shops and offices in
those towns. Then the goods are taken by boats or trains to the
capital, Cairo, where the Sultan lives, and to other large towns. In
all these towns there are hundreds of people, so that a man can only
know those who live near him or work with him. Most of them are
unknown to one another and are like strangers, although they all live
in one town and can all speak Arabic.

5. Life in the Villages

The country-people of Egypt are very poor, and have to work very hard
all the year round in their fields. Their houses are built of bricks
dried in the sun, plastered together with mud, and the roof is made of
plaited palm leaf. Inside there is only one room, which has a big
oven made of mud with a flat top on which the father and mother sleep.
The work in the fields is very hard, as the ground has to be made
fertile by digging canals and ditches all over it to bring the water
from the Nile, because, you remember, there is no rain in Egypt. When
the Nile begins to fall, the water has to be raised in baskets
fastened to a wheel or pole, and thrown on the ground. In order to
get enough money, the people plant another kind of seed as soon as one
harvest is gathered; first, perhaps, planting wheat, then millet, or
cotton, then maize. So the country-people in Egypt are always working
hard from sunrise to sunset all the year in their fields, and their