Passages of the British and American Mail Steamers.... Massachusetts Railroad Dividends.. French Railroads......... Canal Tolls of Pennsylvania for 1841 and 1842.. Pennsylvania Railway and Motive Power Tolls in 1841 and 1842. 292 292 Amount of Tolls received on the New York Canals in 1842.. 293 List of Places on the Junction and Erie Canals, and their Distance from each other 570 572 Periods when the Hudson River Closed and Opened, at Albany, from 1817 to 1842 576 NAUTICAL INTELLIGENCE. Shoals in and about the Entrance of Harwich Harbor...... 475 Pilotage Department, Belgium.-Islands Discovered.............. 569 Commercial 'Change Hours in New York, Philadelphia, etc... Bead Manufactory at Venice... Habits of a Man of Business...... Business Men of New York-Fish, Alley, Lawrence... Honest Merchant and Lawyer. Fire Proof Safes-The Salamander... South American Huano.......... Frauds in the Beeswax Trade... Illinois Appraisement Law of 1842. Secrets of the Soap Trade......... COMMERCIAL TABLES. Interest Table at 7 per cent per annum, of 365 days........... 200 200 Hutton's Book of Nature laid open... Lester's Condition and Fate of England... Macaulay's Miscellanies.-Smith's History of Education... Salem Belle. Channing's Self-culture............ Dow's Travels and Labors.-Lincoln's Lives of the Presidents... Coleman's Books for Children, etc., etc.... 105 106 106 107 107 108 108 Third Annual Report of the Baltimore Mercantile Library Association........... 201 201 Frost's Book of the Navy.-Sigourney's Pleasant Memories of Pleasant Lands..... 202 Book of Commerce by Sea and Land.... 202 Edwards' Self-cultivation.-Braithwaite's Practical Medicine, etc..... 203 203 204 Career of Puffer Hopkins.-Harper's Family Library, No. 157.. 204 Twenty-second Annual Report of the New York Mercantile Library Association. 297 298 299 Borrow's Bible in Spain.-Green's Tales and Sketches.......................................................................... 300 300 Noctes Ambrosianæ of Blackwood.-Scott's Miscellanies....... 391 Macarty's National Songs, Odes, and Poems.-Rollo Philosophy...................... 392 392 Johnson's Farmers' Encyclopedia and Dictionary of Rural Affairs.. Chapin's Philosophy of Reform.-Old Humphries' Thoughts for the Thoughtful.... 394 Flower Garden.-Stevenson's Incidents of Travel in Yucatan... 396 Linear Drawing Book.-Juvenile Drawing Book.... 396 Stephens' Incidents of Travel in Yucatan... 487 Jarvis' History of the Sandwich Islands.-The May Flower.-Conquest and Self- 488 Webster's Speeches.-Griswold's American Poetry.-Bible Quadrupeds.. 489 490 Silliman's Gallop among the American Scenery.-Bremer's Neighbor.. 491 491 Gazetteer of the United States.-Reed's Advancement of Religion.-Young 492 Ellis (Mrs.) Wives of England.-Mason's Karen Apostle....... 492 577 Olin's Travels in Egypt, etc.-Bremer's H-Family.-Pise's Aletheia.. 578 579 580 580 HUNT'S MERCHANTS' MAGAZINE. JANUARY, 1843. ART. I.-COMMERCE OF EGYPT.* THE ancient mother of religions, arts, and laws, Egypt, placed as it is on the confines of Asia, Africa, and Europe, gains importance daily, as the interests of the three continents become more and more commingled. Its physical isolation and compactness of population, together with their immemorial submissiveness, have given its present remarkable ruler peculiar advantages in causing this garden and store-house to become what "it must from the necessity of things be, the great bazaar of the Old World. It must be a centre of influence, self-supported, or dependent only on those commercial relations which time will gather round it." The area of Egypt proper, from Syene, or Assonan, north, between the western desert, and the two seas, is about equal to that of "the Middle States" of the American Union; but the cultivable land, i. e. the land watered naturally or artificially by the Nile, equalled, in 1835, only about 2,000,000 acres; though this might be increased even to 3,500,000. Beyond the reach of these fertilizing waters, all is frightful sterility; presenting upon a region of moving sands and sun-burnt rocks, the pale and yellow hues of death, in glaring contrast with the greenness of the busy valley, and its blue, lifegiving stream. But there is some pasturage in the mountains and on the skirts of the sandy waste. "A perpetual struggle is carried on between the desert and cultivation. In many parts of the Delta, the desert has invaded and mastered the soil. In the neighborhood of Abowzabel, in the district of Essiout, and some other parts of Egypt, the desert has been vanquished by cultivation. In fact, were there hands to plough, and water to irrigate, it is not easy to calculate what an immense tract of territory might be rescued from the waste. The hot winds of the desert, however, often destroy the hopes of the husbandman; their intensity and duration become objects, to him, of the greatest anxiety, for there are seasons in which the khamsine (which takes its name from its ordinary duration of fifty days) dries up whole dis * Prepared mostly from Bowring's Report to the British Government, 1840. tricts, even after irrigation. Added to this, the prospect of large and productive harvests is sometimes suddenly cut off by the visitations of locusts." The inundations of the river, too, on which the country depends, are very various in character and consequences: when favorable to the upper regions, they are excessive in the lower; and when they suit the lower districts, they sometimes leave the higher country almost dry. "One of the greatest public works ever contemplated in Egypt, is the barrage intended to regulate the waters of the Nile, by a huge dam, with sluices, near the fork of the Delta. The original suggestion emanated from the scientific men of the French expedition, and Napoleon is reported to have spoken in its favor. M. Linant, who has had the direction of the work, estimates that it will irrigate 3,800,000 feddans,* even in the lowest inundations, and without the aid of machines; and that, with the aid of machines, a very large quantity in addition, up to a distance of eight leagues above the barrage, would be supplied with water. He represents that it will meliorate the canal navigation, improve both the Damietta and Rosetta branches of the Nile, give sufficient water to Mahmondich canal, and allow the largest vessels to communicate from that canal to the Nile; and will enable canals of three or four metres wide (nili) to supersede the seffie of eight metres, which now must be cleared every year. He asserts that it will, at a small charge, enable the government to make the canal of Suez navigable; undoubtedly one of the most important undertakings that can be suggested for the improvement of Egypt, and the commercial interests of mankind. It will give water to the Kalish of Cairo all the year round, in supplies as sufficient as are provided by the most favorable inundations. He objects to the present system of irrigation, that the making canals does not raise the level of the water, while every year the canals get more and more filled with mud; and shows, that in the uncertainty of the inundations, no calculations can be made as to the probable agricultural produce of the country. He estimates that the work would require five years for its completion, and that the expense would be $7,758,164. On this report orders were given for commencing this stupendous work, worthy the land of the pyramids. But it seems to have been entered on without due consideration, and, after a large expenditure, has been again abandoned, or deferred. Two millions of stones, &c., were collected, covering no less than 2,000 acres of good land, thus thrown out of cultivation, and 12,000 workmen were employed. A railway has been formed, connecting with the Nile the quarries of the Mokattam mountains, behind Cairo, (out of which the stones of the pyramids were hewn,) in order to furnish stone for the work. Arrangements had been made for a vast supply of forest timber from the woods in the neighborhood of Scanderoon." Thus, some $850,000 were expended; but the arrangements now proceed sluggishly, nineteen-twentieths of the workmen have been dismissed, and the works do not seem to be prosecuted with the vigor and unity of purpose which presided at first. Besides, so much efficiency has been discovered in the steam engine for raising water, that it may be found better to use it instead of the dam. "The productive powers of the soil of Egypt are incalculable. Whereever water is scattered, there springs up a rapid and beautiful vegetation; the seed is sown and watered, and scarcely any other care is required for * A feddan is calculated by Mr. Lane to be somewhat less than an acre. the ordinary fruits of the earth. Even in spots adjacent to the desert, and which seem to be taken possession of by the sands, irrigation brings rapidly forth a variety of green herbs and plants. In two years an agree able garden may be created in the neighborhood of Alexandria, which is the least promising part of Egypt. Many a spot there is where the tall weeds grow coarsely but splendidly, which would nourish the fairest fruits and richest produce." In Lower Egypt are some 50,000 watering machines, called sakiahs, worked by some 100,000 men, or 150,000 oxen ; besides innumerable instruments like a New England "well-sweep," called shadoofs. The viceroy stated that he had introduced 38,000 sakiahs. As one of them costs 1,200 piastres,* and an ox 900, 50,000 sakiahs, &c., represent a capital of 165,000,000 piastres; and for the one hundred and eighty working days in the year, the men at 1, and the oxen at 14 piastres per day, the cost is 58,500,000 piastres. Calculating the interest on the first cost of the sakiahs and oxen, at the usual rate, 12 per cent per annum, we have the enormous annual outlay of 65,520,000 piastres, for irrigation alone, in Lower Egypt. M. Linant calculates that the dam above mentioned would save this expense, besides much of that of canals, one of which, (the small canal of Serdawi,) watering but 8,000 feddans, cost $500,000. The population of Egypt, under Amasis, (who united the twelve jarring kingdoms Isaiah speaks of, chap. xix., verse 2.) was seven to nine mil. lions, and it is said to have then had twenty thousand cities; now, it has two to two and a half millions of people, who, however, are very prolific, as were the Egyptians anciently. Indeed, the houses swarm with children, so that, as the laws of health are becoming better known and practised, and the drafts for foreign wars, which drained the country of its most vigorous and productive men, have at present ceased, the working popula tion may be expected to increase very rapidly. Accurate statistics in the East, are, of course, at present, out of the question; but it is estimated that of the people, 150 to 200,000 are Copts, 18 to 20,000 Turks, 7,000 Greeks, 6,000 Catholic Franks, 3,000 Jews, 2,000 Armenians, and the rest are Arab fellahs and Bedawin. Almost all the agricultural production of the country is in the hands of the Mahometan fellahs, who are the most submissive, gay, and excitable of beings. Under every political change, the fellah's destiny has been unchanged; rarely accumulating wealth, the day's labor provides but for the day; a few ornaments, purchased or inherited, a mud hut, without floor or window, and a few utensils of the cheapest and commonest sort, are his all. Idolizing the Nile, almost as of yore, and considering no evil to be compared to quitting the sight of it, he soon pines to death elsewhere; but, careless of the future, if left in peace to cultivate his land and pour the waters of his beloved river over the rich soil on its banks, "he would neither desire nor dream of a happier condition; he is contented, though a perpetual laborer, to gather little of the fruits of his labor; and of his race it may be said, as Amron said of the ancient Egyptians, They are bees, always toiling, always toiling for others, not themselves.' He will rather die than revolt; impatience under any yoke is unknown to him; resignation is his primary virtue; his life, his faith, his law is submission. He was made for peace, not for war; and though his patriotism is intense, there * Twenty piastres go to the dollar. |