44 r 



NA TURE 



\_Attgust 31, 1 88 j 



necessitate some such means of communication, I venture to pre- 

 dict it will be built in accordance with the plan sugge>ted fifty- 

 nine years ago by the working smith, and not on that of Brunei's 

 Thames Tunnel, or of any other tunnel yet carried out. 



At the beginning of the present century a committee was 

 appointed to consider the " practicability of making a land com- 

 munication by tunnel under the River Forth, at or near Queens- 

 ferry." In a report dated November 14, 1805, it was 

 recommended that a double tunnel should be constructed at an 

 estimated cost of 164,000/., or at the rate of 30/. per yard, 

 exclusive of shafts and pumping. The surveyors reporting, 

 grounded their belief in its practicability upon the fact that at 

 Barrowstowness, coal-workings had been carried under the same 

 Firth for a mile, and at Whitehaven coal was worked for the 

 same distance under the Irish Sea, in both places le-s water being 

 met with under the sea than under the land. The report con- 

 cludes in the following words : "That a more easy and unin- 

 terrupted communication betwixt every part ot a country 

 increases the intercourse of commerce, arts, and agriculture, all 

 must know. Ferries are still and often a formidable bar in the 

 road. Of these in this country, the one under review at Queens- 

 ferry is perhaps the most conspicuous. It is, in fact, the 

 connecting point betwixt the north and south of Scotland, and 

 indeed of the realm, and in this point of view the improvement 

 of it must be considered a national object." These words are 

 as true and as applicable to the case in 18S2 as they were in 

 1S05. A ferry still is the only means of communication across 

 the Forth of Queensferry, though the traffic has increased a 

 hundredfold, l'arliment, by the passing of the Forth Bridge 

 Act during ihe present session, has given a practical recognition 

 of the truth of the statement in the above-quoted report, that 

 the improvement of the Forth passage is a "national object." 



As you will receive a paper on the Forth Bridge from my 

 partnei, Mr. Baker, 1 will not trouble you with details of the 

 proposed structure at the present moment. I may state, however, 

 that after a careful consideration of the difficult problem, in con- 

 cert with my able colleagues, Mr. T. E. Harrison, the chief 

 engineer of the North-Eastern Railway, and Mr. W.H. Bartow, 

 chfef engineer of the Midland Railway, we unanimously advised 

 the directors of the Forth Bridge Company to abandon the pro- 

 ject for a suspension bridge, and to construct a steel girder bridge 

 of the unprecedented span of 1,700 feet. The total length of 

 the structure is ij mile, and it includes two spans, as aforesaid, 

 of 1,700 feet, and two of 675 feet, over the navigable channels 

 on each side of Inehgarvie. The execution of the work has been 

 intrusted to me, and my intention is that the Forth Bridge shall 

 be not only the biggest, but the strongest and stiffest bridge yet 

 constructed. 



Although great navigable rivers offer the most serious impedi- 

 ments to lines of communication lying at right angles to the 

 direction of the stream, and necessitate such formidable under- 

 takings as the Forth Bridge, with a clear headway of 150 feet 

 above high water, and the Severn Tunnel at a depth of 163 feet 

 below the same datum, still it must be remembered that such 

 rivers were the earliest, and are yet the cheapest, highways for 

 inland communication. Antwerp, the third port in the world, 

 ranking only after London and Liverpool, owes its commercial 

 importance undoubtedly to the Scheldt, which affords admirable 

 water-carriage for a distance of 60 miles from the sea coast in- 

 land. London, similarly, is an inland port situated about 50 

 miles up the Thames ; hence one-half of the distance between 

 Antwerp and London is made up of fine rivers capable of being 

 navigated by the largest ocean-going steamers. The practical 

 result of the existedce of this splendid line of natural communi- 

 cation is, that iron girders and rails can be conveyed from the 

 heart of Belgium to the metropolis at a far lower price per ton 

 than from any ironworks in this country. Unfortunately, the 

 southern coast of England and the opposite coast of France are 

 indented by no such rivers as the Thames and the Scheldt, or v. e 

 should never have heard of the horrors of the " middle passage " 

 in " o ckleshell " boats, or of the Channel Tunnel. 



To realise, however, the important part which rivers play in 

 facilitating inland communication, it is necessary to glance at the 

 other side of the Atlantic. In Canada, for instance, we have 

 the great inland port of Montreal, where transatlantic steamers 

 anchor some 500 miles from the coast The very term " stream 

 of traffic " suggests a river, and the St. Lawrence well illustrate, 

 it. Into s .me small forest tributary of the Ottawa the lumber- 

 men slide a log of timber, ami many months after will that log 

 with thousands of others, forming together a huge raft, with huts 



upo 1 it for the accommodation of the care-takers, be found pur- 

 suing its slow but ever continuing progress down the St. Lawrence 

 to Quebec, where it will be shipped to this country. 



In Egypt for countless ages the ".-hip of the desert " and the 

 boats of the Nile constituted the only means of communication. 

 Wheeled carriages were practically unknown, although as long 

 ago as 1S32, Mehemet Ali bewildered the pilgrims by starting 

 off for Mecca across the desert in a Long-Acre barouche. But 

 the Nile holds an exceptional position amongst the rivers of the 

 world, for not only was it until quite recently practically the sole 

 means of inland communication for the country through which it 

 flows, but it was, and still is, literally the life of Egypt, since 

 without Nile water there would not be a green spot in the whole 

 of that now fertile land. Having filled the office of consulting 

 engineer to the Egyptian Government for seven years, 1 have 

 had occasion to give particular attention to the Nile, and I may 

 state that in an average year that river conveys no le-s than 

 ioOjOCO million tons of water, and 65 million tons ■ f silica, 

 alumina, lime, and other fertilising soils down to the Mediter- 

 ranean. The Nile begins to rise about the middle of June, at 

 which time the discharge averages about 350 tons of water per 

 second, and attains in September a height of from 19 feet to 

 2S feet, and a discharge of from 7, coo to 10,000 tons per 

 second. 



Napoleon the Great said that every drop of Nile water should 

 be thrown on the land, and he was right so far as Low Nile 

 discharge is concerned. The cultivated land in the provinces of 

 Lower Egypt have an area of 3 million acres, and to irrigate 

 this effectually at least 30 millions of tons of water per day 

 would be required, an amount somewhat exceeding the whole of 

 the Low Nile discharge. At present the irrigation canals are 

 totally inadequate to convey this quantity, and imperfect irriga- 

 tion and consequent loss of crops is the result. In many in- 

 stances a couple of men labour for a hundred days in watering 

 by shadoof a single acre of ground, all which amount of labour 

 might be dispensed with if the barrage of the Nile were com. 

 plert-d, and a few other works carried out, the whole of which 

 would' be paid for handsomely by a water rate of two shillings 

 an acre. You will gather, therefore, that I do not think the 

 resources of Egypt have been fully developed, magnificent as 

 they even now are, having reference to the size of the country. 



It is hardly necessary to say that a net-work of canals laid out 

 with a view to irrigating the lands of lower Egypt can also be 

 used at any time in the event of w ar for the offensive or defensive 

 flooding of the whole or any part of the said lands. Except for 

 the work of man, Lower Egypt for four months in the year would 

 be -imply the bed of a river, and for the remaining months a 

 mud bank. Long before the historic period, however, the Nile 

 had been embanked, and canals, such as the Bahr-Jusef, had been 

 formed: the first, to , keep the floods off the land, except 111 

 desired quantities ; and the second, to run off the inundation 

 waters as soon as the fertilising matters in suspension had been 

 deposited on the lands. Should the inhabitants of Egyyt neglect 

 at any time to maintain the works of their ancestors, successive 

 floods would quickly destroy the embankments and wash the 

 light material into the canals. Thus the whole surface of the 

 country would again be levelled, and the land of Egypt would 

 revert to its primitive condition of being a river's bed for one- 

 third of the year, and probably a malarious swamp for the 

 remainder. . , 



It is hardly possible to refer to Egypt without saying a few 

 words about the Suez Canal. Far-seeing people, including the 

 late Khedive, have long been of opinion that another ship canal 

 will be required in Egypt. In 1876 I submitted to His Ilighnes-, 

 in accordance with my instructions, detailed plans and estimates 

 for such a canal from Alexandria through Cairo to Suez. I he 

 total length of the canal was 240 miles, and with the same width 

 as the existing Suez Canal the estimated quantity of excavation 

 was 160 million cube \ards. 



An interesting and significant incident in the dnstory ot the 

 Suez Canal occurred in' May, 1S78, when a fleet consisting of 

 ten steamers and sixteen sailing vessels passed through with 

 S,4I2 native troops bound from India to Cyprus During the 

 same year no less than 58,274 soldiers traversed the Canal. 

 Since 1S7S events have inarched rapidly, for no one then foresaw 

 that the next important movement of British troops canal-ways 

 would be of a nature ho-tile in appearance, if not in fact, to the 

 inhabitants of Egypt. The announcement that French and 

 not British troops were to hold the canal was received by the 

 public with an expression of surprise and perhaps of slight resent- 



