People of Africa | Page 5

rain in Egypt. When the Nile begins to fall, the water has to be raised in baskets fastened to a wheel or pole, and thrown on the ground. In order to get enough money, the people plant another kind of seed as soon as one harvest is gathered; first, perhaps, planting wheat, then millet, or cotton, then maize. So the country-people in Egypt are always working hard from sunrise to sunset all the year in their fields, and their little children have to learn to mind sheep, goats, or cattle, and to help in other ways as soon as they can walk alone.
Other men work on the Nile, carrying people or goods up and down the river in boats from place to place. This, again, is hard work, but the boatmen seem very happy and often sing as they pass along. People in the country villages are ignorant, and very few can read or write. Sometimes when the harvest has been bad and food is dear and scarce, the people get deeply into debt. There is a great deal of illness and disease, but there are very few doctors and nurses to help people to get well. So the life of an Egyptian peasant is a hard one--a great deal of work and very little time to rest, or play, or learn. But everyone has something to make him happy, and, unless there is famine or pestilence, these people have their wives and children and home, just as people have in England and other countries. The only person who need be unhappy is the one who has no one to love.
So we have learnt a little about that part of Africa called Egypt--the land of the Nile--and about the people who live in it. We must remember that all the other people who live on the North Coast of Africa, in Tunis, Algeria, and Morocco, are something like the Egyptians, also speaking Arabic, and different from the dark-skinned people who live farther south where it is very hot.
III ----------- THE SAHARA, THE GREAT SANDY DESERT
1. What the Desert is Like
In the last chapter we were reading about Egypt, and we said that on the West of Egypt lay the Great Desert. Now a desert is a place where for some reason no food will grow. In some deserts the soil is too bad; in some the ground is covered with salt; in others, like the Sahara, there are no rivers. In some places in the Sahara there is water coming up through a crack in the rocks. This water is called a "spring," and wherever one is found, trees and grass and food will grow. Such a place is called an "oasis." In the big oases there are villages and towns. But the sun is so hot that before the water from the spring has flowed very far it is dried up, and beyond that nothing will grow. So when we think of the Sahara we have to try and picture to ourselves a very big country, full of hills and valleys, but with no rivers or lakes. It is a journey of many months to cross the Sahara, and day after day there is nothing to see but sand--sand, not flat, but in ridges of hills like great waves of the sea. When people are travelling across this desert, they get very tired of looking at nothing but sand all day. Then, at last, as the sun sets, they reach an oasis where there is water and bananas and date-trees, and perhaps houses and people. Sometimes great winds blow in the desert and bring a sandstorm. Then the sand beats hard against everything. If travellers meet a sandstorm, they have to throw themselves face downwards on the ground to keep the sand out of their eyes and mouth. Very often people who live in the desert have bad eyes, and many are blind because of the sandstorms.
2. How the Desert Came
Long, long ago, the Sahara was not quite so dry as it is now. There were rivers then, which have dried up since. When there was water, food would grow, and people could keep sheep and cattle. In those days there were several large cities there. But when the water began to dry up, the ground became sandy and nothing would grow. Then, whenever the wind blew, the sand was carried along and began to cover up the houses and temples. The people had moved away because their food would not grow, and soon the sand completely covered the old cities. For a long time they were buried, until some Europeans went to see what they could find out about the people who lived there long ago. Then they dug and dug in the sand, and found the old