600 DIKES OF THE NILE. 



ougUj saturated and enriclied, and then to conduct them over 

 other grounds requiring a longer or a second submersion, and, in 

 general, to suffer none of the precious fluid to escape except by 

 evaporation and infiltration. 



Lake Moeris, whether wholly an artificial excavation, or a 

 natural basin converted by embankments into a reservoir, was de- 

 signed chiefly for the same purpose as the ha/rrage built by Mougel 

 Bey across the two great arms which enclose the Delta, namely, 

 as a magazine to furnish a perennial supply of water to the thirsty 

 soil. But such artificial arrangements alone did not suffice. Canals 

 were dug to receive the water at lower stages of the river and 

 conduct it far into the interior, and as all this was still not enough, 

 hundreds of thousands of wells were sunk to bring up from the 

 subsoil, and spread over the surface, the water which, by means 

 of infiltration from the river-bed, pervades the inferior strata of 

 the whole valley.* 



If a system of lofty continuous dikes, like those of the Po, 

 had really been adopted in Egypt, in the early dynasties when 

 the power and the will to undertake the most stupendous ma- 

 terial enterprises were so eminently characteristic of the govern- 

 ment of that country, and persevered in through later ages, and 

 the waters of the annual inundation had thus been permanently 

 prevented from flooding the land, it is conceivable that the pro- 

 ductiveness of the small area of cultivable soil in the Nile valley 

 might have been long kept up by artificial irrigation and the 

 appHcation of manures. But nature would have rebelled at last, 

 and centuries before our time the mighty river would have burst 

 the fetters by which impotent man had vainly striven to bind 

 his swelling floods, the fertile fields of Egypt would have been 

 converted into dank morasses, and then, perhaps, in some distant 

 future, when the expulsion of man should have allowed the grad- 

 ual restoration of the primitive equilibrium, would be again 

 transformed into luxuriant garden and plough land. Fortunately, 

 the sapientia JEgyj^tiorv/m^ the wisdom of the Egyptians, taught 

 them better things. They invited and welcomed, not repulsed, 

 the shmy embraces of Nilus, and his favors have been, from the 



* It is said that in the Delta alone 50,000 wells are employed for irrigation 



