2 IRRIGATION FARMING. 



the history of Atlantis is by many regarded as a myth, 

 there are too many fa<fts actually in existence to war- 

 rant any such conclusion. According to this record, 

 irrigation was in pra(5lical use fully 12,500. years ago. 

 The English and French hydrographic engineers of 

 the present age have found by the most careful sound- 

 ings of the Atlantic ocean that the sunken continent 

 of Atlantis has a physical existence, and that it also 

 has the remains of great canals still defined upon its 

 submerged surface. 



Twenty-seven centuries before the Star of Bethlehem 

 shone so brightly by night a clever Egyptian ruler 

 named Menes turned the course of the Nile 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 Moeris. The historians Herodotus, 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 3,600 stadia, or 413 

 miles in circumference and 300 feet deep. Modern 

 travelers have considerably reduced the circumference 

 and depth of this lake, making it measure somewhat 

 less than fifty miles in circumference, but even with 

 this curtailment it must have been a magnificent 

 engineering work, worthy of the admiration of all the 

 ages. It was constru(5led, some historians say, by 

 King Moeris ; others, by King Amenemhet in the 



