No journey can be quite soothing as a voyage on the Nile from Cairo to Philae. Day after day as you sails upstream nothing in the general pattern changes. Tonight’s incredibly bright stars are the same as last night’s and tomorrow’s. Each new bend in the river discloses the same buffalo circling his waterwheel, the same pigeon-lofts on the houses, the same dark Egyptian faces swathed in white.
The banks are surprisingly green, a patchwork of rice fields and sugarcane, of palms and eucalyptus, and then beyond them, like a frame set around a picture; one sees the desert and the hills. There is always s a movement somewhere, but it is of a gentle, ambulatory, kind and one feels oneself going along in a rhythm with the processions of camels and donkeys on the bank, and the feluccas gliding by, and the buffalo, released at last from his wheel, sliding to the blessed coolness of the water in the evening. Occasionally a whiff of humanity comes out from the mud-hut villages on the shore, and it contains traces of the smoke of cooking forest, of dried cow-dung and of Turkish coffee, of some sweet and heavy scent, jasmine perhaps, and of water sprinkled on the dust. It is not unpleasant.
Lying on deck, one idly observes the flight of birds, one dream one lets the hours go by, and nothing can be more satisfying than the sight of the brown pillars of a ruined temple that has been standing alone on the edge of the desert for the last two thousand years. This is the past joining the present in a comfortably deceptive glow, and the traveller, like a spectator in a theater, remains detached from the both, he would not for the world live in the dust and squalor of these villages he finds so picturesque, and the ancient ruins he has come to see do not really evoke the early civilization of the Egyptians.

  Attitudes towards the smoking of cigarettes and the consumption of alcohol may be used to illustrate typical African ethics. Apart from the fact that smoking has now been linked with the lung cancer disease, the African moralist has always regarded smoking as an indication of moral degradation. A number of people have accepted the moralist ideaon smoking. Some have refrained from smoking and those who could influence others, such as parents and religious leaders, have also exerted their influence to prevent others from smoking. On the other hand, a good many people have remained indifferent to the moralist view and have continued to smoke. The same argument has been applied to the consumption of alcohol. The African moralist, basing his judgement on the behaviour of a few alcoholics, tends to regard the habit of taking alcohol as a sign of wretchedness. The moralist holds the view that anybody who forms the habit of consuming alcohol will never do well in life. While this may be true in respect of a few people in the society, the fear of the moralist has not been justified. However, the economist is primarily interested in the habit of smoking and the consumption of alcohol and alcohol in so far as they give satisfaction to smokers and drinkers and so generate supply of and demand for tobacco and alcohol. The economist is interested in knowing how many packets of cigarettes are consumed and to what extent an increase or fall in consumption could affect production that is, supply. Similarly, he is interested in how much beer is consumed and how the supply of beer will adjust to the demand for it. He examines the habits and the pressures which can lead to the readjustment of wants and the reallocation of resources to cover the wants.

  Some moral principles associated with religion tend to lead on to economic problems. Followers of certain religions are expected not to consume pork, take alcohol or smoke tobacco. Devotees of some religious groups, on the other hand, can eat pork, while others are expected to abstain from alcohol and smoking. Strict observance of these moral rules could cripple the breweries, the cigarette factories and some businesses however, there seems to be a growing number of alcohol consumers and cigarette smokers- a development which should be of interest to the economist.