622 DIVERSION OF THE NILE. 
diversion of the Nile from its natural channel, and the turning 
of its current into either the Libyan Desert or the Red Sea. 
The Ethiopian or Abyssinian princes more than once menaced 
the Memlouk sultans with the execution of this alarming pro- 
ject, and the fear of so serious an evil is said to have induced 
the Moslems to conciliate the Abyssinian kings by large pres- 
sents, and by some concessions to the oppressed Christians of 
Egypt. Indeed, Arabian historians affirm that in the tenth 
century the Ethiopians dammed the river, and, for a whole year, 
cut off its waters from Egypt.* The probable explanation of 
this story is to be found in a season of extreme drought, such 
as have sometimes occurred in the valley of the Nile. 
The Libyan Desert, above the junction of the two principal 
branches of the Nile at Khartum, is so much higher than the 
level of the river below that point, that there is no reason to 
believe a new channel for the united waters of the two streams 
could be found in that direction; but the Bahr-el-Abiad flows 
through, if it does not rise in, a great table-land, and some of 
its tributaries are supposed to communicate in the rainy season 
with branches of great rivers flowing in quite another direction. 
Hence it is probable that a portion at least of the waters of 
this great arm of the Nile—and perhaps a quantity the ab- 
straction of which would be sensibly felt in Egypt—might be 
sent to the Atlantic by the Congo or Niger, lost in inland lakes 
and marshes in Central Africa, or employed to fertilize the Lib- 
yan sand wastes. 
About the beginning of the sixteenth century, Albuquerque 
the “Terrible” revived the scheme of turning the Nile into 
the Red Sea, with the hope of destroying the transit trade 
* “Some haue writté, that by certain kings inhabiting aboue, the Vilus 
should there be stopped; & at a time prefixt, let loose vpona certaine tribute 
payd them by the Aegyptians. The error springing perhaps froa truth (as 
all wandring reports for the most part doe) in that the Sultan doth pay a 
certaine annuall summe to the Adiéssin Emperour for not diverting the course 
of the Riuer, which (they say) he may, or impouerish it at the least.” 
GroraEr Sanpys, A Relation of a Journey, etc., p. 98. See, also, VANSLEB, 
Voyage en Egypte, p. 61. 
