Page:H. D. Traill - From Cairo to the Soudan Frontier.djvu/170

152 a vessel about the size of a stable bucket. Imagination can conceive nothing more primitive than the process or more rude than the appliance by which the work is performed. The wooden lever from one end of which the bucket is suspended, hangs midway in its length upon a thick upright which serves as a fulcrum; the end at which the power is applied is weighted with nothing more elaborate than a large lump of sun-dried mud. The steep bank is terraced in one, two, or three places, according to its height, by a rough-cut ledge or ledges, of only a few feet in breadth, and hollowed out to form a shallow tank. Into this tank the labourer at the waters edge empties the bucket which he has just filled from the river, and from the tank his comrade or comrades ladle it by the same rudimentary leverage at one or more stages, as the case may be, to the top of the bank, for diffusion over the soil. In its utter simplicity, in its profound yet contented inadequacy, the whole operation is pathetic in