COTTON IN EGYPT AND THE SUDAN. 19 



November the water becomes clearer and the sluice gates are gradu- 

 ally closed ; the reservoir is filled in about 100 days. When there is a 

 lack of water in Egypt, about the beginning of April, the quantity 

 required is let off until the beginning of the new flood, i.e., at the 

 beginning of July, when all the sluices are opened again. So far this 

 reservoir was able to hold 1,000 million cubic metres of water, and 

 this was used specially for Central Egypt, the Fayoum, and the 

 pumping stations south of Cairo. In 1907 work was started to 

 heighten the dam by 7 metres, which work was completed in 1912, 

 and the reservoir is now able to hold 2,300 million cubic metres, from 

 which additional 950,000 feddans of Delta land will be watered ; these 

 had up to now, owing to lack of water, not yielded enough or were 

 lying entirely fallow. The dam will also substantially extend the 

 cultivable land in Central Egypt, whilst Upper Egypt, which possesses 

 a complete system of basin irrigation, is to remain in its present 

 condition until some works of regulation in the sudd districts of the 

 Upper Nile can be undertaken. 



The remaining irrigation works, which are situated in the Egyptian 

 Nile Delta below Assuan, are at Esneh, Assiut (for regulation of the 

 irrigation of Fayoum), on the Delta point, and near Zif ta ; they all 

 aim at the artificial damming of the flood-waters for the filling of the 

 main canals in order to save pumping. A dam on the Rosetta arm 

 is in projection. All the works serve the purpose of keeping the 

 water at the proper level in proportion to the surface of the cultivated 

 land, and to raise the level of the Nile so that the water can flow 

 easily into the lateral tributary canals, which begin below Luxor. 

 The water level in the canals is already a few miles below the branch- 

 ing-off point higher than the level of the bordering land, so that the 

 water can easily flow on to the fields by means of sluices and small 

 ditches. Willcocks' great project to make a giant reservoir in the 

 Wadi-Rayan, in the district of the Lybian Desert, south of Fayoum, 

 which would hold no less than 20 milliards cubic metres of water, 

 finds still many opponents in Egypt. 



The " perennial " canals or permanent canal system has been 

 carried out since 1910 in the whole of the Middle Egypt, Lower 

 Egypt, and the Fayoum, as far as the surface of the land will allow-, 

 it has gradually displaced the old system of basin irrigation along 

 the Nile as far as Upper Egypt, and the latter system is now used 

 only in Upper Egypt, which is difficult to irrigate. Land which 

 formerly depended entirely upon the flood of the Nile enjoys to-day 

 a regular summer irrigation, and in this way cotton cultivation in 

 Central and Upper Egypt has advanced from 53,000 feddans in 1894 

 to 246,000 in 1906, and 363,000 feddans in 1911. With basin irriga- 

 tion alone, the cultivation of cotton and sugar would have been 

 impossible there, because the methods of watering could, on account 

 of the period of vegetation, only be used upon land growing cereals 

 and vegetables. The basin irrigation has, it is true, the advantage 

 of bringing the Nile silt on the land, which w T ith the perennial canal 

 is mostly deposited in the canals. For this reason the soil of Upper 

 Egypt on the whole is not so much exhausted as that of Lower 

 P^ypt. Where canal irrigation exists one must reckon the acreage 

 as at least double in order to obtain a true comparison of the cultur- 

 able area, because at least two crops per year can be grown. No 



