— 71 — 
the low lands to the very edges of Lake Borrilos are being reclaimed 
and inhabited. The loss of life which would occur nowadays would 
be truly appalling. A breach anywhere within 100 kilometres of the 
Barrage on the east bank of the Rosetta branch or the west bank of 
the Damietta branch during a very high flood would be a national 
disaster. 
The terror reigning over the whole country during a very high 
flood is very striking. The Nile banks are covered with booths at 
intervals of 50 metres. Each booth has two watchmen, and lamps 
are kept burning all night. Every dangerous spot has a gang of 50 or 
100 special men. The Nile is covered with steamers and boats carrying 
sacks, stakes, and stone ; while the banks along nearly their entire 
length are protected by stakes supporting cotton and Indian corn 
stalks, keeping the waves off the loose earth of the banks. In a settle- 
ment of a culvert in the Nile bank north of Mansourah in 1887 I 
witnessed a scene which must have once been more common than it is 
to-day. The news that the bank had breached spread fast through the 
village. The villagers rushed out on to the banks with their children, 
their cattle, and everything they possessed. The confusion was inde- 
scribable. A narrow bank covered with buffaloes, children, poultry, 
and household furniture. The women assembled round the local 
saint’s tomb, beating their breasts, kissing the tomb, and uttering loud 
cries, and every five minutes a gang of men running into the crowd 
and carrying off the first thing they could lay hands on wherewith to 
close the breach. The fellaheen meanwhile, in a steady, business-like 
manner, plunged into the breach, stood shoulder to shoulder across 
the escaping water, and with the aid of torn-off doors and windows 
and Indian corn stalks, closed the breach. They were only just in 
time. This is the way the fellaheen faced a breach. And this is how 
the old Governors of Egypt faced them. During the flood of 1887 
I complimented an official on the Nile bank, whose activity was quite 
disproportionate to his apparent age. He told me that he was a 
comparatively young man, but he had had charge of the Nile bank at 
Mit Badr when the great breach occurred in 1878, and that Ismail 
Pasha had telegraphed orders to throw him and the engineer into 
the breach. He was given 12 hours’ grace by the local chief, and 
during that interval his hair had become white ; subsequently he was 
pardoned. These were the senseless orders which used to petrify 
officials into stupidity. 
