DIVERSION OF THE NILE. 597 



The probable explanation of this story is to be found in a season 

 of extreme drougLl;, such as have sometimes occurred in the val- 

 ley of the Nile. 



The Libyan Desert, above the junction of the two principal 

 branches of the Nile at Kliartoum, is so much higher than the 

 level of the river below that point, that there is no reason to 

 behove 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 dh'ection. 

 Hence it is probable that a portion at least of the waters of this 

 great arm of the Nile — and perhaps a quantity the abstraction 

 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 Libyan 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 through 

 Egypt by way of Kosseir. Li 1525 the King of Portugal was 

 requested by the Emperor of Abyssinia to send him engineers for 

 that purpose ; a successor of that prince threatened to attempt the 

 project about the year lYOO, and even as late as the French occu- 

 pation of Egypt, the possibility of driving out the intruder by 

 this means was suggested in England. 



It can not be positively afl&rmed that the diversion of the 

 waters of the Nile to the Red Sea is impossible. In the chain 

 of mountains which separates the two valleys, Brown found a 

 deep depression or wadi, extending from the one to the other, 

 apparently at no great elevation above the bed of the river, but 

 the height of the summit level was not measured. 



Admitting the possibihty of turning the whole river into the 

 Red Sea, let us consider the probable effect of the change. First 

 and most obvious is the total destruction of the fertility of Mid- 



certaine annuall summe to the Abissin Emperour for not diuerting the course 

 of the Riuer which (they say) he may, or impouerish it at the least." — Georob 

 Sakdys, a Belation of a Journey, etc., p. 98. See, also, Vansleb, Voyage en- 

 J^gypte, p. 61. 



