QUEER WAYS OF RAISING WATER.

Hokitika Guardian, 15 November 1923, Page 3

QUEER WAYS OF RAISING WATER.

(|t v a liritoii in I'.gypt). At the edge of the wide held- is a -mall unsown patch of hare earth, shad,.,l |ro m the suit hy a vine trciliscl mi lough slake-, la the shade below an ox, hlindlolded hy a piece ol sacking tied over horn- and eye-, plods his wonrv circle, round and round, turning a creaking water-wheel. This i- the snkkich, most imlispensahlc ol Kgvpt's agricultural implements. As the horizontal wheel turns, its wooden teeth catch the serrated rim of a second wheel, -ol vertically, and to the round ol the latter are lashed earthenware jars which scoop up water from the canal below ami pour it into a mud channel, whence it is distributed over the crop. The -trident creak of the grinding wood, with its ceaseless call ol "Kn-0000-ah." 00-ah." is the only sound that echoes over the fields during Egypt's hot afternoons. If the grating noise ceases for it. moment, the sudden silence wakes the ox’s sleeping master to goad hint once more <m Ins round. In Kgvpt no water dc-ceuding from mountain recesses aids the work of tillage as it finds it- own level. All must lie rai-ed from the deep channel of the Nile, ami the appliance* tt-cd. ell'ective as they are, remain probably the most primitive in the world. .Most common after the sukkieh. i- the aristocrat of its kind, comes the shadin'. It is merely a rough-hewn branch, balanced between twin pillars j of earth. At one end it is weighted by an adhesive lumo of heavy mud. while from the other i- suspended a -mall basket of goatskin. V.T:il - the more lordly po--e--or (it a snkkich makes hi- ox sweat in his ,-tcad. ihc shadin' must be worked hv hutnatt labour. Its owner must bend to haul down the goatskin basket to the water and straighten himself to

empty it- contents, once the weighted branch has raised it to tic- higher level. All Kgvpt is a silver-streaked network of water-ways and wafer-rat-iug instruments. The l.ig canals act as arptoducts from the Nile. Smaller canals, creeping here and there like the tracks i f snails, spread the meshes of water further afield. Finally, sakkiohs and shadin'*, with a host of smaller but equally primitivedevices, raise the water to the shallow j renehos in the fields.