414 Sir Colin Scott-Moncrieff [Jan. 25, 



about 40,000 acres never succeeded in obtaining water, though in the 

 midst of abundance. 



The Fayum had long been a much-neglected province, though a 

 most picturesque and attractive one. From carelessly allowing Nile 

 water to flow into the lake during the floods, it had risen enough to 

 swamp 10,000 acres of valuable land, and this mischief we found 

 still increasing. Throughout the whole country drainage had been 

 absolutely neglected. And here I would point out that irrigation 

 without drainage means the sure deterioration of the land sooner or 

 later. Considerable pains have been taken in Egypt to get the water 

 on to the land. No sort of effort had been made to get it off. In a 

 properly irrigated tract, between every two canals of supply, there 

 should flow a drainage channel ; the former should follow as far as 

 possible the highest lands, the latter should follow the lowest. The 

 canal gets smaller, till at last it is exhausted, giving itself out in 

 innumerable branches. The drain, like a river, gets larger as it 

 proceeds, being constantly joined by branches. But if there be no 

 drains, and if the canals are laid out to flow into one another, so as 

 to divide the country into, as it were, a cluster of islands, you can 

 understand how the drainage water has no means of flowing off into 

 the sea, and settles in unwholesome swamps. These we found pre- 

 vailing to an alarming extent in the rich provinces of the delta. 

 Such was the wretched state of Egyptian agriculture — the one single 

 source of the country's wealth — when Lord Dufferin laid down the 

 lines of the English administration, which have been amplified and 

 pursued ever since. 



It was in May 1883 that I took charge of the irrigation depart- 

 ment in Egypt, having before then had some twenty years' experience 

 of similar work in India ; and I soon had the inestimable advantage 

 of being joined by a band of the most indefatigable, energetic and 

 able engineers, also from India, with whom it was my great privilege 

 and happiness to be associated for the next nine years. I cannot 

 talk too highly of these my colleagues — men who knew their work 

 and did it, who kept constantly moving about in the provinces, badly 

 lodged, badly fed, denied domestic comforts, constantly absent from 

 their wives and families (they were all married men). 



My friends, happy is the reformer who finds things so bad that 

 he cannot make a movement without making an improvement. 

 Happy the reformer who has as colleagues a staff of thoroughly 

 loyal, duty-doing and capable men. Happy the reformer who is not 

 pestered on all sides by the officious advice of the ignorant. Happy 

 the reformer who has behind him a strong brave chief, as honest and 

 truthful as he is strong. Such rare happiness fell to me in Egypt 

 with my noble colleagues, and with Lord Cromer as our chief. 



On first arrival, I was pressed, both by English and French 

 men, to go into the question of the storage of the flood waters 

 of the river on a large scale. I declined to do so, considering 

 it would be time enough to think of increasing the quantity of 



