COTTON IX EGYPT AND THE SUDAN. 



119 



the cultivators to live near to the river, and the villages of the 

 provinces of Dongola, Berber, and Khartoum are situated, there- 

 fore, no more than 1 km. from the Nile. 



Independent from its distance from the river is the 4th class of 

 cultivable land areas, viz., those with rain crops, which, as the 

 provinces of YVadi-Halfa and Dongola are as good as rainless, com- 

 mence on a small scale only in the province of Berber, become more 

 numerous, however, about 50 km. south of Khartoum, but even there 

 it happens pretty frequently that through the local nature of 

 the rainfall a village can grow for two or three years in succession 

 hardly any other crop than " duchn. " 



The small land tracts watered by the Nile flood represent about 

 10 per cent, of the total land of the Sudan which is under cultivation, 

 about a further 10 per cent, is represented by artificially irrigated 

 land, about 80 per cent., by far the largest proportion, is land watered 

 through rainfall. 



Expressed in thousands of acres the following areas were under 

 tillage in the Sudan : 



The further economic development of the Sudan depends, for 

 the most part, upon the possibility of finding a similarly happy 

 solution of the question of watering as in Egypt, and, indeed, the 

 question of the extension of cotton cultivation depends primarily on 

 this solution. Basin irrigation of 150,000 feddans in the province of 

 Dongola and 200,000 feddans in the province of Kassala has been 

 completely planned, and even partially executed, at a cost of about 

 ;2 per feddan ; well-considered irrigation schemes, by means of a 

 dam and canals, for 3,000,000 feddans in the Gesireh have been 

 elaborated, and also the distant small tracts of land to the east of 

 the Blue Nile, through which the Atbara flows, can be artificially 

 irrigated, so that in the Egyptian Central and East Sudan probably 

 as many as 12 million feddans of land can be brought into cotton 

 cultivation, because the Blue Nile and the Atbara could, without 

 injury to the requirements of Egypt, supply the necessary water. 



The difficulties in the way of a further extension of the irrigation 

 works in the Sudan are up to now to be found in the fact that, with 

 the exception of the natural overflow, only a very restricted quan- 

 tity of water for artificial irrigation in summer may be taken from 

 the Nile in the Sudan, according to an agreement with jealous 

 Egypt, so long as the extensive regulation of the distant swamp 

 regions of the Bahr-el-Gebel is not carried out, which would double 

 the quantity of Nile water available for the use of Egypt, and 

 \\hich, according to Sir William Garstin's project, is said to necessi- 

 tate an outlay of ^'20,000,000, in round figures. This scheme would 



