THE NILE DAMS A XD RESERVOIR. 



5Si 



trolled by strict regulations. Thus, two years ago, when the Nile 

 was below the average in summer discharge, it was decreed in Upper 

 Egypt that the 'lifting machines,' which include the shadoof, or 

 bucket-and-pole system, and the sakieh, or oxen-driven chain of buckets, 

 should be worked not more than from five to eleven consecutive days, 

 and stop the following nine to thirteen days, between the middle of 

 April and the middle of July; and the order in which the different 

 districts were to receive a supply was carefully specified, so that, as far 

 as possible, every crop should get watered once in about three weeks. 

 When it is remembered that a single watering of an acre of land means, 

 where shadoofs are concerned, raising by manual power about 400 tons 

 of water to varying heights up to 25 feet, and that four or five waterings 



Fig. 1. The Dam at Aswan, visited by the late Cecil Rhodes and his Party. 



are required to raise a summer crop, it will be seen what a vast amount 

 of human labor is saved throughout the world by the providential cir- 

 cumstance that in ordinary cases water tumbles down from the clouds, 

 and has not, as in Egypt, to be dragged up from channels and wells. 

 Shadoof work, under average conditions, involves one man's labor for 

 at least one hundred days for each acre of summer crop; so that even 

 at 6d. per day for labor, the extra cost of cultivation due to the absence 

 of rain would amount to 50s. per acre. 



The great Nile Eeservoir and Dam at Aswan, the Barrage at Asyut, 

 and various supplementary works in the way of distributing canals and 

 regulators, are designed with the object of mitigating the evils 



