is not long before we are both dressed and out to examine the
curious sight. The banks are about the height of a high room, and at the
distance of, it may be, fifty yards, all the way along them there are
deep cuts like miniature denes, or chines, running down to the water. At
the foot of each of these a brown-skinned man stands with his bare feet
at the edge of the water, gripping with his toes to save himself from
slipping in the mud. At this time in the morning he is clothed in a
quantity of garments, mostly mud-colour, but as the sun grows strong he
throws them aside and stands forth a fine bronze statue with his skin
gleaming in the clear light. Just above his head there is a pole
bridging the cut, or chine, and fastened to the middle of it at right
angles is another, which swings up and down upon it like a see-saw.

A huge lump of mud like a swollen football is plastered on to the far
end of this, and at the other end a basket or basin made of skin is
attached to a string. The mud ball is heavy, and when it is allowed to
go free it hangs down to the ground; but the brown man constantly
reaches up and raises it by pulling down the basin, which he dips in the
Nile water, then lets the heavy end swing it up as high as his head,
when he tips it up, and the water from it flows into a pool at that
height. Another man stands on the edge of this pool and he has a similar
arrangement, by means of which he raises the water out of the pool with
a basin like the first, and there may be another above him, and another
again. This primitive arrangement is called a _shaduf_, and by its means
the water from the Nile is lifted up to the surface of the fields, where
it runs away in miniature channels to water the roots of the maize. This
is one of the most extraordinary sights in the world. Think of all the
mills in which machinery does delicate work like that of the human hand;
think of the patterns made by the machines, of the newspapers printed
and folded with very little human guidance, and then leap back to this
clumsy device used now by the Egyptian as it was used by his ancestors
thousands of years ago! A few pints of muddy water raised by a weight,
half of it falling out of the badly constructed basin as it goes, and
the same drop of water handled again and again by four men till the tiny
trickle reaches the fields! We watch with amazement. The shrieking and
squeaking of the _shadufs_ goes on, the brown figures stoop down, ri