4.96 REPORT—1905. 
wild crags, level stretches, but everywhere absolutely sterile, dry sand and rock, 
at such a level that the Nile flood has never reached it to cover its nakedness with 
fertile deposit. A few miles north of Cairo the river bifurcates, and its two 
branches flow each for about 130 miles to the sea. As you are probably aware, 
with rivers in a deltaic state the tendency is for the slope of the country to be 
away from the river, and not towards it. In the Nile Valley the river banks are 
higher than the more distant lands. From an early period embankments were 
formed along each side of the river, high enough not to be topped by the highest 
flood. At right angles to these river embankments others were constructed, 
dividing the whole valley into a series of oblongs, surrounded on three sides by 
embankments, on the fourth by the desert heights, These oblong areas vary from 
about 50,000 to 3,000 acres. I have said the slope of the valley is away from the 
river. It is easy, then, when the Nile is low, to cut short deep canals in the river 
banks, which fill as the river rises and carry the precious mud-charged water into 
these great flats. There the water remains for a month or more, some three or 
four feet deep, depositing its mud, and then at the end of the flood it may either 
be run off direct into the receding river, or cuts may be made in the cross embank- 
ments and the water passed off one flat after another, and finally rejoin the river. 
This takes place in November, when the river is rapidly falling. Whenever the 
flats are firm enough to allow a man to walk over them with a pair of bullocks, 
the mud is roughly turned over with a wooden plough, or even the branch of a 
tree, and wheat or barley is immediately sown. So soaked is the soil after the 
flood that the seed germinates, sprouts, and ripens in April without a drop of rain 
or any more irrigation, except what, perhaps, the owner may give from a shallow 
well dug in the field. In this manner was Egypt irrigated up to about a century 
ago. The high river-banks which the flood could not cover were irrigated directly 
from the river, the water being raised as I have already described. 
The Barrage. 
With the last century, however, appeared a very striking figure in Egyptian 
history, Muhammed Ali Pasha, who came from Turkey a plain captain of infantry, 
and before many years had made himself master of the country, yielding only a 
very nominal respect to his suzerain lord, the Sultan, at Constantinople. 
Muhammed Ali soon recognised that with this flood system of irrigation only 
one cereal crop was raised in the year, while with such a climate and such a 
soil, with a teeming population and with the markets of Europe so near, something 
far more valuable might be raised. Cotton and sugar-cane would fetch far higher 
prices; but they could only be grown at a season when the Nile is low, and they 
must be watered at all seasons. The water-surface at low Nile is about 25 feet 
below the flood-surface, or more than 20 feet below the level of the country. A 
canal, then, running 12 feet deep in the flood would have its bed 13 feet above the 
low-water surface. Muhammed Ali ordered the canals in Lower Egypt to be 
deepened ; but this was an enormous labour, and as they were badly laid out and 
graded they became full of mud during the flood and required to be dug out afresh. 
Muhammed Ali was then advised to raise the water-surface by erecting a dam (or, 
as the French called it, a barrage) across the apex of the delta, twelve miles north of 
Cairo, and the result was a very costly and imposing work, which it took long 
years and untold wealth to construct, and which was no sooner finished than it 
was condemned as useless. 
Egyptian Irrigation since the English Occupation. 
With the English occupation in 1883 came some English engineers from India, 
who, supported by the strong arm of Lord Cromer, soon changed the situation. 
The first object of their attention was the barrage at the head of the delta, which 
was made thoroughly sound in six years and capable of holding up 15 feet of 
water. Three great canals were taken from above it, from which a network of 
branches are taken, irrigating the province to the left of the western, or Rosetta 
