552 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



enumerated above, by supplying in summer a larger volume of water 

 at a higher level in the canals, so that not only can more land be irri- 

 gated, but that labor in lifting water will be saved. When the Interna- 

 tional Commission, eight years ago, recommended the construction of 

 a large reservoir somewhere in the Nile valley, I was desirous of know- 

 ing what would be the opinion of a real old-fashioned native landowner 

 on the subject; and was introduced to one whose qualifications were 

 considered to be of no mean order, as he was a descendant of the 

 Prophet, very rich, and had been twice warned by the government that 

 he would probably be hanged if any more bodies of servants he had 

 quarrelled with were found floating in the Nile. He was a very stout 

 old man, and, between paroxysms of bronchial coughing, he assured 

 me that there could be nothing in the project of a Nile reservoir, or it 

 would have been done at least 4,000 years ago. In contrast with this 

 I may mention that, a few months ago, the most modern and en- 

 lightened of all the rulers of Egypt, the present Khedive, when visiting 

 the dam, said he was proud that the great work was being carried out 

 during his reign, and that the good services rendered by his British 

 engineers was evidenced by the London County Council coming to his 

 Public Works Staff for their chief engineer. 



The old system of irrigation, which the descendant of the Prophet 

 looked back upon with regret, was little more than a high Nile flooding 

 of different areas of land or basins surrounded by embankments. Less 

 than a hundred years ago, perennial irrigation was first attempted to 

 be introduced, by cutting deep canals to convey the water to the lands 

 when the Nile was at its low summer level. When the Nile rose, these 

 canals had to be blocked by temporary earthen dams, or the current 

 would have wrought destruction. As a result, they silted up, and had to 

 be cleared of many millions of tons of mud each year by enforced labor, 

 much misery and extortion resulting therefrom. About half a century 

 ago, the first serious attempt to improve matters was made by the 

 construction of the celebrated barrage at the apex of the Delta. This 

 work consists, in effect, of two brick arched viaducts crossing the Eosetta 

 and Damietta branches of the Nile, having together 132 arches of 16 

 feet 4 inches span, which were entirely closed by iron sluices during 

 the summer months, thus heading up the water some 15 feet, and 

 'throwing it at a high level into the main irrigation canals below Cairo. 

 The latter are six in number, the largest being the central canal at the 

 apex of the Delta, which, even in the exceptionally dry time of June, 

 1900, was carrying a volume of water one-fourth greater than the 

 Thames in mean flood, whilst the two canals right and left of the two 

 branches of the river carried together one half more than the Thames, 

 and the Ismailieh Canal, running down to the Suez Canal, though 

 starved in supply, was still a river twice the size of the Thames at the 

 same time of the year. At flood times the discharges of all the canals 



