166 PRODUCTIONS OF EGYPT. can be reached, so as to be rendered productive, by the present means of irrigation. The chief productions of Egypt, of the vegetable kind, are cotton, hemp, flax, indigo, sugar, rice, corn, barley, millet, peas and beans, clover, tobacco, and dates. Vast tracts of land have been planted, in various parts of the country, with olive and mulberry trees. The former thrive in an extraordinary way, producing fruit in the third year. This valuable acquisition has been gained from Candia, (where, however, it takes five years to bear fruit) and Egyptian oil will, ere long, enter the European market with great advantage. Rose-water is produced in the Fayoum. The silk of Egypt is on the decline: principally, I should think, from the ill-chosen spots for the plantations of mulberry trees. The mineral productions of Egypt are emeralds, copper, silver, and other metals (the mines of which do not appear to have been worked since the days of the Romans); salt, nitre, soda, sal-ammoniac, &c. Besides the above articles of produce, which CONSUMERS OF THE PRODUCE. 167 Egypt exports to a vast amount, may be enumerated buffalo, ox, and goat skins. A number of very valuable articles pass through Egypt, in search of a market, from Nubia and Arabia, such as gums, spices, drugs, ivory, and coffee. The principal consumer of Egyptian produce (after Turkey) has hitherto been Austria, which took, some years since, nearly twice as much as England; Austria, in return, sent more than double the amount of goods supplied by England; but the trade with that power is on the decline, in consequence of Syria now furnishing Egypt with timber, which, formerly, was almost all procured from Dalmatia. In the rank of consumers, England takes the next place, followed very closely by France and Tuscany. In supply, this last named nation takes precedence of both France and England, and nearly furnishes goods to an equal amount with Austria. In the year 1831, the exports of Egypt amounted to £1,650,000; the imports, to £1,568,000. Of this, raw cotton was exported 168 IMPORTS AND EXPORTS. to the amount of £620,000; and manufactured cotton imported to the value of £325,000. But, since the above period, an enormous increase has taken place in the production of cotton. In 1835, (before the breaking out of the plague) the cotton crop was valued at one and a half million sterling. The principal articles procured from Austria are timber, copper, iron, manufactured cottons, cloth, glass, and hardwares; from Tuscany, manufactured cottons, silk and woollen goods, iron, and straw plait. England supplies iron, cutlery, coals, manufactured cottons, and warlike stores; and France, cloth, silk goods, sugar, lead, and wine. Egypt supplies Turkey with every thing, but since the cession of the province of Adana, takes hardly a single one thing in exchange. Her trade with Greece is also nearly all for money. Amongst the numerous articles furnished to these two powers, the principal one is rice. A census of the population of any Mohammedan country is, from the sacredness of the hareems, very difficult to be obtained with any POPULATION OF EGYPT. 169 degree of correctness, even by the government itself, and renders it the less surprising that the population of Egypt should have been so differently estimated by foreigners. For my own part, judging from the quantity of land under cultivation, the number of hands that must necessarily be required to till it, the great waste of human labour in Egypt, and the thick-set way in which the towns and villages are strewed over its surface; and comparing it, in these respects, with other countries, I do not hesitate to pronounce the population to amount to at least three and a quarter millions of souls. The population of Egypt, under the first Ptolemies, is stated to have amounted to three millions; and, considering the sanguinary contests that had been carried on between the Egyptians and Persians, during nearly the whole of the two centuries preceding the Macedonian invasion, it is probable that at that period it did not amount to more. On the other hand it is not by any means likely that the population ever much 170 CULTIVATED LAND. exceeded the number at which I now estimate it, notwithstanding that the ancient writers affirm it amounted to seven millions; for the mountains that hem in the Nile are the same that always existed-and, though the sand that has drifted from them may have contracted the width of the valley in a slight degree, yet large tracts (according to the accounts of these same writers) have, in the interim, been gained from the sea, to counterbalance this loss of cultivated land, above and on the skirts of the Delta. Calculating, therefore, the superficial contents of Egypt (i.e. of the land that is susceptible of cultivation) to have been then as it now is-six thousand eight hundred square miles*- a population In making this calculation, I suppose the cultivatable land of the Delta to form an isosceles triangle; of which the base is one hundred and twenty miles long, and perpendicular height sixty-five miles. The valley of the Nile, from the apex of the Delta to Assouan, I consider a rectangle, five hundred miles in length, and five in breadth; and that the Fayoum contains four hundred square miles-thus, therefore, 3900+ 2500 + 400 = 6800. = These are geographical miles—and it must be borne in mind, that, although the valley of the Nile considerably exceeds five miles in width, yet, that the extent of cultivation is seldom so much |