When We Regard The General Aspect Of The Soudan, It Is Extreme
Wretchedness; The Rainfall Is Uncertain And Scanty, Thus The
Country Is A Desert, Dependent Entirely Upon Irrigation.
Although
cultivation is simply impossible without a supply of water, one
of the most onerous taxes is that upon
The sageer or water-wheel,
with which the fields are irrigated on the borders of the Nile.
It would appear natural that, instead of a tax, a premium should
be offered for the erection of such means of irrigation, which
would increase the revenue by extending cultivation, the produce
of which might bear an impost. With all the talent and industry
of the native Egyptians, who must naturally depend upon the
waters of the Nile for their existence, it is extraordinary that
for thousands of years they have adhered to their original simple
form of mechanical irrigation, without improvement.
If any one will take the trouble to watch the action of the
sageer or water-wheel, it must strike him as a most puny effort
to obtain a great result, that would at once suggest an extension
of the principle. The sageer is merely a wheel of about twenty
feet diameter, which is furnished with numerous earthenware jars
upon its exterior circumference, that upon revolving perform the
action of a dredger, but draw to the surface water instead of
mud. The wheel, being turned by oxen, delivers the water into a
trough which passes into a reservoir, roughly fashioned with
clay, from which, small channels of about ten inches in width
radiate through the plantation.
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