Gross home; they will be called out again for two months in the summer. || This Nr. 11060. canal was begun twenty years ago, and is not yet finished; we deepen it a britannien. little every year. Those baskets you see the men using are furnished by 28. Apr.1895. themselves. Their friends must furnish them with food. Government supplies nothing whatever. They live on bread and water; they commence work at sunrise and continue at it till sunset; one hour's rest is allowed in the middle of the day for food; they breakfast before they begin in the morning, and sup after they have finished at night; they sleep on the ground in the open air. N.B. I was glad to observe in passing the Farshoot Canal last March that it is now completed and in operation.-H. V. S., 1895. Note 3. Abuses in connection with the Sugar Factories in Upper No. 51.-Statements of Native Factory and Estate Hands as to Forced Labour We are taken by force to work on the sugar estates and in the factories. Not one of us would go willingly. We would all leave to-morrow if we could. Many have farms of their own; they are taken away from them, and the farms are neglected. Nominally we are paid P. T. 11/2 to P. T. 2 per day, but it passes through the hands of the Sheikhs, and they stop most of it on different pretexts, arrears of taxes, and what not. || Those of us who work inside the factory are kept there day and night. Each man works six hours at a time, and is then relieved, but he is not allowed to leave the factory lest he should run away. The work is carried on day and night for three months. The men off duty must sleep on the stone pavement of the factory, amid the noise and heat. Each man works twelve hours out of the twentyfour, in alternate shifts of six hours. || (N. B. I had very great difficulty in getting this evidence, for the officials kept at my elbow the whole time, to prevent any conversation with the men; but I gave private instructions to some of my crew, whom I took with me as an escort, to question men, and the above is what they elicited. || While passing through the boiling-house of one factory a man advanced, covered with treacle to the elbows and knees, and complained to the Inspector that he had received no pay for many days; the Inspector summoned a clerk, who said: "Oh, he is in a category that receive. no pay." The Inspector hastily ordered him to be paid, and he was given. 3 piastres (72 d.) and thrust away. I observed guards, armed with long stout sticks, posted at all the entrances.) Nr. 11060. As stated in my present Report, these serious grievances have entirely britannien, been removed, and no cause of complaint remains. -H. V. S., 1895. Gross 28. Apr.1895. Note 4. || Associated with the corvée, as tending to pauperize the villagers, was the compulsory purchase of salt, from which we have delivered them. I think it worth while annexing the statements of the peasants in two other districts, showing how it affected them, and constituted the last straw that rendered their burdens intolerable. No. 45. Evidence of Villagers, District near Marajeh, Province of Keneh. The people were living in the most wretched hovels, and were clad in old sacks and rags, they were obviously ill-fed and wretchedly poor and destitute. Their story, as told by themselves, is as follows:- We once all had land of our own. Most of us come from the neighbourhood of Esneh. We lost our land in the tim of Ismaïl Pasha; the taxes and exactions were so crushing at the beginning of his reign that we could not pay them; the arrears accumulated for four or five years, and then any one who could afford to pay our arrears was given over our land without further payment. || We lost our land fifteen years ago; since then we have rented land where we could get it. We have been here some years. We pay our landlord P. T. 200 per feddan per year, and 12 ardeb of the produce; this swallows up the first crop almost entirely, sometimes the whole crop does not suffice. || After the first crop we cultivate patches by means of the shadoof. We club together to do that; six of us work one set of shadoofs, one set waters two fcddans if we work every day from sunrise to sunset; by this means we raise a crop of barley. But when we do this our landlord charges us P. T. 77 and 11⁄2 ardeb of barley additional rent. Besides these things we try to keep a few sheep, but we have to pay sheep tax on them. || Our landlord has to pay the land tax; he also protects us from forced labour, because if we were taken away for that we could not pay the rent at all. | At it is, we could just manage to live if it was not for the salt tax, but we have to pay that on every member of our families down to the smallest child, and that takes all that is left to us. We do not want salt; there is plenty of salt close by in the desert. We could irrigate our land much better and more of it if the canals had wat in them, but they are dry; if they were deepened, there would be water in them always. They took me to see two canals. They were both dry, but they had dug deep holes in the floors of the canals, and thus obtained water, which they were extracting by shadoof for the irrigation of their land. It was a burning hot day, but they toiled without intermission at their work from morning to night, and day after day, the only reward each man had in pro Gross spect being the produce of one-third of an acre of bartey, the lions's share Nr. 11060. of which was to go to the landlord. || I have entered thus minutely into the britannien. circumstances of these poor people to illustrate how hardly the salt tax bears 28. Apr. 1895. upon the most destitute class, and how cruel have been the consequences of the extortions of the past. No. 46. Statement of Villagers of Ouled Ammer, Province of Kench. January 15, 1883. These were even more destitute than those of Marajeh; one family of eight were all naked, including the grandfather. They put on pieces of old sacks to hide their nakedness after I came. The only member of it who wore clothes was the mother, who had an infant at breast. They told me that they were forced to buy 18 lbs. of salt for this baby! One of the boys, they said, was an orphan, whose father and mother were both dead; he was adopted for charity. They pointed him out to me. He was about 7 or 8 years of age. They complained that they had to pay the salt tax on him as well as on all the others. || I inquired how it had come to pass that they were all naked. They stated that they had been compelled to sell their clothes to pay for the Government salt. || The villagers made the following statement: "Some of us rent our land, we do not all own it; our rent is one-third of the crop, and the land tax P. T. 125 per feddan. || "We have already harvested our dourra, and have planted with wheat as much of the dourra stubbles as we can manage to irrigate with shadoofs. I inspected these patches of wheat. They were divided into little traylike squares to hold the water conducted into them by channels from the shadoofs. These squares are called tarihas. "Six men can water five feddans for the season, but half the men of the village have been taken away for forced labour at the canal works on the other side of the river. This is just the time they are most wanted here, so that we shall not have more than half a crop, about 2 ardebs per feddan (i. e., the crop will be worth 2 7. per feddan; 13 s. 4 d. will go to the landlord, and 17. 6 s. 8 d. will remain to be divided amongst the shadoof men under 9 s. a-piece). || "If we had a water wheel we could raise 5 ardebs per feddan, and cultivate much more in second crop; but where are we to get money to set up a sakiyeh? | "As we cannot irrigate the wheat properly it will mature very late. The Nile will overflow our land early in September, and the water will remain thirty or forty days. The dourra is put in immediately it retires, and is harvested in December." Nr. 11060. britannien. Note 5. Taxation. Gross- No. 30. Statement of a Fellah, Village of Wasta, 3 miles from Siout, on 28. Apr.1895. opposite side of the river, Province of Assiout, Upper Egypt. (This must not be confounded with a town of the same name in the Province of Benisouef in Middle Egypt.) January 6, 1883. I have 4 feddans, half-a-feddan is planted with palms. I and my neighbours would plant more but for the tax. I have thirty-three palms on halfa-feddan. I remember the time of Mehemet Ali. I paid 5 paras per tree then, now it is 3 piastres; every part of the tree is taxed; the leaves, the sticks (midribs), the husks, the fruit. These are taxed at the entrance of the town where we take them to market (octroi duty *) || I pay P. T. 120 land tax; it was much lower in the time of Mehemet Ali. The land tax has since been materially reduced in Upper Egypt. H. V. S., 1895. Q. When was it raised? A. In the time of Ismaïl Pasha, at the beginning of his time. The people in my neighbourhood are much indebted to the Greeks; they pay more than twice as much to them as to the land tax. I can remember when there was no debt. It began in the time of Ismaïl Pasha; the taxes were too much, and they had to borrow. The Moukabala increased the debt. They pay 5 per cent. per month interest. || Q. Have the people not borrowed to buy new wives? A. Some have. Only the rich have more than one wife. || Q. Is not this the cause of much debt? — A. (Vehemently.) No! no! no! It is the taxes of Ismaïl Pasha. We are too poor; we find it too hard to live to think of divorces and marriages and new wives. I was so persecuted with forced labour that I was obliged to emigrate nine years ago. Evidence of the Villagers of Meteia, Province of Assiout. January 7, 1883. Our townland contains 4500 feddans. It pays a land tax of P. T. 140 per feddan. It has no irrigation canals; in consequence of that we can only raise one crop annually, viz., immediately after the Nile retires. We grow onions, tobacco, maize (dourra), wheat and fodder crops; one or other of these, never two in succession. The cereal crops - indeed all the crops are liable to damage or failure from the khamseen wind. We have to pay taxes all the same. We have printed papers acquainting us with the amount of land tax, but with reference to others collectors claim what they like. We have no safeguard against arbitrary exaction; if we do not pay we are beaten or imprisoned. They trade on our ignorance. Formerly matters were worse, for Jetzt in allen grossen Städten abgeschafft. Gross the Moukabala was exacted as well as the land tax; now Moukabala is abo- Nr. 11060. lished, we are not asked to pay it for the last three years. || Our cereal crops britannien. average from 2 to 4 ardebs. They would be greatly increased by irrigation; 28. Apr.1895. each crop would produce much more, and we could grow three times as many crops. We are very discontented with the tax on date palms and sheep. Here they made the same complaints I have already reported as universal in the Delta, as well as in Upper Egypt. — H. V. S. 2 Officials also come round and force us to buy the Government salt; they make us buy two okes per month; every one must buy, whether he has the money or not; the poor are often obliged to sell their clothes in order to buy this salt; otherwise they would be beaten or imprisoned, or both. We are overwhelmed with taxes, and are very poor. Besides that, we suffer very much from the forced labour; we have to furnish 300 men out of a population of 1200 able-bodied men. The farmers sometimes hire labourers as substitutes, paying them P. T. 3 per day (71 d.) for the forced labour. The 300 men are taken away to distant parts of the province now; formerly they were employed on the spot. If 300 men were employed here for our own benefit we could have irrigation canals, and our production would be increased more than four-fold. || There is a great deal of debt; we cannot tell how much on the whole townland nor on any particular farm; every man keeps it to himself. If we borrow 17. now we must pay 17. 10 s. at the end of a year, i. e., 50 per cent.; but often 5 or 6 per cent. per month of four weeks is charged. The debts are principally owing to rich natives, not to Europeans. The land of fellahs is often sold to pay their debts. When they are insolvent they sell their land voluntarily; they are net forced to sell, because, as these transactions are between natives and natives, they do not come before the Mixed Tribunals. The sale being voluntary, we get the full value of our land. When we sell it we count it here to be worth from 10l. to 137. per feddan. In the Delta it is worth from 30 l. to 50 l., because it is irrigated and embanked, thus enabling three crops to be raised annually instead of one. H. V. S. We are specially poor this year, and the payment of the land tax has been a severe hardship, because Arabi took away our horses, sheep, buffaloes, cattle, and wheat; he also took away 150 recruits. He took away even the guards whose duty it is to keep order. Very few of these have returned; they have been killed or died. The recruits last sent have returned, because when they reached Cairo they found the war over and the Christians in possession. Q. Do you bless the name of Arabi? A. (General chorus.) We bless those who do us good; how, then, should we bless Arabi? We know |