— 75 — 
After sounding and boring at every possible site on the Nile and 
surveying, boring, and levelling in the desert between Wadi Haifa and 
the Fayoum, I submitted my report in 1894, proposing an open dam 
at Assouan of a type which I trusted would meet the requirements of 
a Nile reservoir dam. Sir William Garstin approved of the site and the 
design, and the dam was built between 1898 and 1902 with Mr. Maurice 
Fitzmaurice C.M.G, as resident engineer. 
The Assouan Reservoir at its present level contains one milliard of 
cubic metres of water which will suffice for the conversion of half a 
million acres to perennial irrigation, adding £15,000,000 to the wealth 
of the country. But though the dam was only completed at the end 
of 1902, already the whole of the water has been devoted to special 
tracts, and the Government is reluctantly compelled to refuse all appli- 
cations for water. 
32. The raising of the Assuan dam. — Egypt already possesses 
the germ of all the storage works she needs. Six years ago a few far- 
seeing men saw clearly what all of us understand to-day ; but among 
the few, no man had greater faith in the future of the country than 
Sir Ernest Cassel. The Assouan Reservoir project had been lying 
buried for four years in official pigeon holes, when in 1898 Sir Ernest 
came forward with the funds, and with Sir John Aird & Co., as con- 
tractors, and Sir Benjamin Baker as Consulting Engineer, undertook 
to complete the Assouan dam and the Assiout weir by December 1903. 
The Egyptian Government, advised by Sir William Garstin, accepted 
his offer, and received the completed works by December 1902. 
The Assouan dam is a granite structure 2,000 metres long which 
crosses the head of the Assouan cataract of the Nile in one continuous 
straight line. The dam is pierced by 140 under sluices of 7 metres by 
2 metres for passing floods, and by 40 upper sluices of 3J metres by 
2 metres for passing the high level water of the reservoir. The sluices are 
regulated by u Stoney ” gates worked by winches at the roadway level. 
While the red, muddy waters of the Nile flood are pouring down 
the river, the whole of the sluices are open and the river discharges 
itself through them without parting with its silt. This is the real object 
of the sluices, for if the dam were solid and the river forced to flow 
over the top, the reservoir would soon be filled with deposit and obli- 
terated, while Egypt, deprived of this rich mud, would be considerably 
the poorer. This is the great feature of the dam. While the dam holds 
together, the reservoir will be free of silt. 
