1 54 The D^mnage of Fens and Low Lands, 



land and providing Alexandria with water. These two stations form 

 the largest installation of pumping machinery in the world. 



For the purpose of improving the irrigation of the Behera, or West 

 District of the Nile, in Lower Egypt, a canal had been made com- 

 municating with the Nile by an intake above the Great Barrage, 

 situated at the junction of the Rosetta and Damietta branches. For 

 about six months in the year, or during low Nile, the river is not 

 high enough for the water to flow into this canal; and it being 

 excavated for the first 25 miles through desert sand, the supply was 

 found to be inadequate for the irrigation of the lands and for the 

 supply of Alexandria. In 1856 the Egyptian Government, in 

 order to remedy the deficiency, decided to erect pumping stations at 

 Katatbeh and Atfeh, so as to be able to pump into the canal from 

 the Nile at a point below that portion of the canal which passes 

 through the desert. The Katatbeh pumping station is situated 

 about 25 miles north of the Barrage. The canal is 75 miles long, 

 and discharges into the Mahmoudieh. The latter has its intake 

 at Atfeh, 15 miles south of Rosetta, and supplies Alexandria and 

 irrigates the north of the province. A large part of the traffic to 

 and from Alexandria and the interior is carried on this canal. 



In order to keep up the required supply it is necessary that the 

 machinery at Atfeh should be worked during six months of the year, 

 and t^at at Katatbeh four months. 



Affeh — The machinery as originally constructed at tliis station 

 consisted of four groups of single-cylinder beam engines, working 

 centrifugal pumps by means of toothed wheels and pinions. These 

 pumps raised 800,000 cubic metres in twenty-four hours (555^ tons 

 per minute) to a height of 8 feet 6 inches. The results attained not 

 being satisfactory, the machinery was altered from time to time by 

 Messrs. Easton and Co., the principal change being the com- 

 pounding of the engines. As, however, even after the alterations, 

 the pumps could not discharge the quantity required (1369 tons a 

 minute), they were finally removed and replaced in 1885 by eight 

 scoop wheels. Four of the wheels were worked by the old engines : 

 two by engines removed from Katatbeh ; and the others by new 

 compound engines. 



Two of the wheels are 9*84 feet, and two ix*8i feet wide, with a 

 diameter of 33 feet. Each wheel has eighty fiat scoops 7*55 feet 

 long, placed at an angle dropping from the radial line, being tangents 

 to a circle concentric with the wheel 6 feet 6 inches in diameter. 



