Identifier: upnilehomeagainh00fair (find matches)
Title: Up the Nile, and home again. A handbook for travellers and a travel-book for the library.
Year: 1862 (1860s)
Authors: Fairholt, F. W. (Frederick William), 1814-1866
Subjects:
Publisher: London, Chapman and Hall
Contributing Library: The Library of Congress
Digitizing Sponsor: The Library of Congress

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the homes of thepeasants who look after the birds. These houses arethe usual mud cubes ; but some are mere open screensof reeds, held together by hay-bands, as seen inthe centre of the view. The pigeon-houses are builtof mud, like small round towers, surmounted by-agroup of cupolas; one of them is seen to the right inour view. Globular earthen pots, similar to thoseseen in many English villages, are built into themud walls, for the nests of the birds, who enterby means of circular holes below. A small lowdoor at the base of the tower, admits the man whosebusiness it is, once in three months, to enter andtake the young pigeons for market, as well as cleanout the guano, which is sold at a good rate, as thebest native manure. Ranges of these pigeon-houses,confined by a curtain wall, ran for half a mile intothe fields, at right angles from the houses in theview; and gave an appearance of a strongly-fortifiedtown to the very innocent place. Benisouef, although the residence of the governor
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BOULAK TO MINIEH. 113 of a small province, is a very dull, uninterestingcountry town; deficient in any good public building,and not worth a two-mile ride across a hot plainto see. Upon the plain, some of the rude con-trivances of the husbandmen may be studied—thewooden collars and palm-fibre ropes for securingcattle to the rude plough; or the norek, a machinefor threshing Indiancorn. It is like ourharrow, but with arow of wheels inplace of hooks, andis dragged over thecorn by two oxen,who describe a widecircle round the clay threshing-floor, and have theirforeheads tied to a beam which passes across them,and to the centre of which the norek is secured by arope. A man, bearing a long staff with a goad atthe end, walks beside and directs them, or sits uponthe light frame of stick and cord built on the sidebars of the machine, which in passing over the cornthreshes out the grain ; the metal wheels, being sharpon the edges, at the same time cut up the straw, sothat the food for man and

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