Identifier: egyptpainteddesc00kell (find matches)
Title: Egypt painted and described
Year: 1902 (1900s)
Authors: Kelly, Robert Talbot, 1861-1934
Subjects: Egypt -- Description and travel
Publisher: London, A. & C. Black
Contributing Library: New York University, Institute of Fine Arts Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Sloan Foundation

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l-Kebir, in itself a fact of some importance asproving the feasibility of making virgin desert profit-able ; and though only in its infancy, many hundreds ofthousands of timber and fruit-trees have been success-fully planted or sown there, and what a few years agowas simply a waste of pebble and sand is now aluxuriant garden. I am not able to give any detailed list of the treesand shrubs which have been planted, but among themare a great variety of pines, eucalyptus, caoutchouc,etc., as well as pomegranates, oranges, and plums.With few exceptions, the trees have done well; somealready are twenty feet or so in height, and many youngbeds have been successfully raised from seed. That thetrees will grow is established ; and if it can be shownthat, as they develop, their economic properties aremaintained, a new and valuable asset will be added tothe resources of Egypt. The experiment is, I think, of the greatest value,and the possibility of the country being eventually able 192 AT THE WELL
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The Life of the Fellah to supply its own hardwood and building timber isone to be anticipated with lively satisfaction. Incidentally this experiment has had the effect ofbringing under cultivation a bit of desert hithertoregarded as beyond its reach, and has given a highmarket value to neighbouring land previously con-sidered worthless. I have spoken a good deal of the fertility of theland and the effect of water on the sand, and oflate years extended irrigation has brought under cul-tivation a very large acreage of desert formerlybarren. There is, however, another zone, fortunately a smallone, where infiltration from the arable land on the oneside, and the drainage from the desert on the other,each heavily charged with rotten salts, have poisonedthe soil and made of it a picture of desolation. Herelittle grows but giant bulrushes or an occasional thorn.Fish are unknown in the brackish water, and wild birdsshun its waste. In the light of day a skeleton, and atnight shrouded in a silen

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