DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.14563#0092
CHAPTER VII.
tenure op land-disposition and manners of the
people.
The tenure of land in Egypt is much the same as Joseph
made it when he was prime minister. The fee of the
greater part of the soil is in the Pasha, though in various
ways much land has gradually passed into other hands.
Good land is worth from twenty dollars to twenty-five dollars
per acre, and is taxed three dollars a year. Land is divided
into very small lots, for grazing and other purposes. The
land is sometimes farmed on shares — the tiller receiving
one fourth of the produce ; hut the mere peasant, or fellah,
does not receive over three or four cents a day; while in
digging canals, and in other public works for the general
good, he is compelled by the sheik to work for nothing and
find himself. But then in Egypt there is no road-tax, no
poll-tax, no school-tax., only a tax on land, on palm-trees,
on every thing that is raised to be consumed.
Egypt is a fine grazing country, — especially in the
Delta, on the eastern side of which was the land of Goshen.
This accords with the allusions in the Bible to the " much
cattle" of the children of Israel. There is a breed of
oxen called buffaloes, but they answer to our American
buffalo only in having a bunch on the shoulders. They
are usually black; their heads are long and flat; their
horns flat, and curling backwards and inwards, and their
whole appearance is one of "non-resistant" meekness.
tenure op land-disposition and manners of the
people.
The tenure of land in Egypt is much the same as Joseph
made it when he was prime minister. The fee of the
greater part of the soil is in the Pasha, though in various
ways much land has gradually passed into other hands.
Good land is worth from twenty dollars to twenty-five dollars
per acre, and is taxed three dollars a year. Land is divided
into very small lots, for grazing and other purposes. The
land is sometimes farmed on shares — the tiller receiving
one fourth of the produce ; hut the mere peasant, or fellah,
does not receive over three or four cents a day; while in
digging canals, and in other public works for the general
good, he is compelled by the sheik to work for nothing and
find himself. But then in Egypt there is no road-tax, no
poll-tax, no school-tax., only a tax on land, on palm-trees,
on every thing that is raised to be consumed.
Egypt is a fine grazing country, — especially in the
Delta, on the eastern side of which was the land of Goshen.
This accords with the allusions in the Bible to the " much
cattle" of the children of Israel. There is a breed of
oxen called buffaloes, but they answer to our American
buffalo only in having a bunch on the shoulders. They
are usually black; their heads are long and flat; their
horns flat, and curling backwards and inwards, and their
whole appearance is one of "non-resistant" meekness.