444 Report S.A.A. Advancement of Science. 



disgracefully " scamped," and the Barrage was found to be useless. 

 The work was then inspected and reported on by various engineers, 

 and the proposals for its repair were submitted, but nothing was 

 done. 



During all this time Lower Egypt was being gradually covered 

 with a network of deep canals leading from the Nile, laid out on 

 no scientific principles whatsoever j private interest had been the 

 ruling principle of their construction. 



These conditions entailed enormous wastage of water on one 

 district, and impossibility of obtaining it in another. No water law 

 existed ; the ownership of the Nile — a river much too large to be 

 exploited by any private person, has never been disputed ; it has 

 always been regarded as public property. Under the old basin 

 system of irrigation the need for any water law was not felt ; when 

 the rise of the Nile occurred it was always in sufficient volume to 

 inundate all the land that was reached by its level. If the flood 

 did not rise to the level required to inundate the land, no legis- 

 lation could assist to water it. The only trace of legislation on 

 the subject was that dealing with the taxation of land. All land 

 in Egypt paid an annual tax, but if the Nile flood did not rise to 

 the level required to inundate any piece of land, the tax on this 

 land was " ipso facto " remitted. The land tax was therefore, in 

 a sense, a water rate, and this condition exists to the present day. 

 Under the canal system introduced during Mehemet All's reign, 

 no proper control of water was practiced, and the greatest irregu- 

 larity prevailed ; the largest landowners and the ruling powers were 

 the " Pashas." It is fairly safe to assume that, when water was 

 scarce, the lands of the " Pasha " suffered least from want of it. 



This unsatisfactory condition of affairs continued until the 

 revolt under Arabi Pasha, and the subsequent occupation of Egypt 

 by the British. The country, with all its assets mortgaged to their 

 full value by the extravagances of Ismail Pasha, stood then on the 

 verge of bankruptcy, and obviously the first step to be taken to 

 retrieve its fortunes was to place irrigation, on which agriculture, 

 the sole source of wealth, depended, on a satisfactory footing. 



Sir Colin Scott Moncrieff was summoned in 1883 to take charge 

 of the irrigation of the country, and found Upper Egypt irrigated 

 under the old basin system, a complicated system of canals in Lower 

 Egypt, a Barrage across the Nile incapable of fulfilling the functions 

 for which it was designed, and, worse still, intimately interwoven 

 with these blunders a great number of vested rights. In his first 

 report. Sir Colin wrote " Egypt was no ' tabula rasa ' on which to 

 lay down the most perfect canal systems, but a country where very 

 life depended on a fully-developed but very bad system-" Among 

 the first works undertaken was the " restoration " of the Barrage 

 officially completed in 1861. When Sir Colin started the idea of 

 repairing the Barrages, he was good-naturedly forgiven for his 

 ignorance of the country natural in a foreigner ! A favourite 

 , Egyptian excuse for escaping the trouble of improvements. The 



