IRRIGATION FARMING. 



The English and French hydrographic engineers of the 

 present age have found by the most careful soundings of 

 the Atlantic ocean that the sunken continent of Atlantis 

 has a physical existence, and that it also has the remain < 

 of great canals still defined upon its submerged surl'acv. 

 Twenty-seven centuries before the Star of Bethlehem 

 shone so brightly by night, a clever Egyptian ruler named 

 Menes turned the course of the Kile so as to carry the 

 turbid waters well out upon the higher ground, upon 

 the very site of the present operations of the English 

 engineer Wilcocks. Menes invented the nilometer, still 

 in use to-day for gauging streams. The first artificial 



lake of which there 

 is any reliable record 

 is Lake Moeri's. The 

 historians Herodo- 

 tus, Diodorus and 

 Pliny have" described 

 it, on the testimony 

 of the inhabitants of 

 the country, as one 

 of the noblest works 

 of the time, from its 

 enormous dimensions 

 and its capacity for 

 irrigation for the benefit of mankind. According to 

 them it was about 3GOO stadia or 413 miles in circumfer- 

 ence and 300 feet deep. Modern travelers have consid- 

 erably reduced the circumference and depth of this lake, 

 making it measure somewhat less than fifty miles in cir- 

 cumference, but even with this curtailment it must 

 have been a magnificent engineering work, worthy of 

 the admiration of all the ages. It was constructed, some 

 historians say, by King Moeris ; others, by Kinu r 

 Amenemhet in the 12th dy misty, 2084 H. 0. In the 

 20th dynasty S.-ti \va> the ruling monarch, and is believed 



VK',. 1. IltltlOATION 5000 YEAIIS AGO. 



