— 80 — 
great size of the ancient lake was of inestimable value to a work whose 
principal use lay in moderating high floods, so the smaller area of the 
modern lake will render it far more useful as a work for feeding the 
low Nile. This lake, will render no mean aid in time of dangerous 
floods, but, in its early years, its main use will be the provision of 
water in summer. It will supply the two milliards which are needed 
to convert the whole of Egypt from basin to perennial irrigation. 
In my book on “The Assuan Reservoir and Lake Moeris” I have 
worked out the cost of the project and estimated it at £2,600,000. 
The rates I have allowed for the excavation work are considered too 
low by some critics. If the earthwork in the Nile Valley had to be 
excavated within 30-day rotations as on the running canals, I should be 
the first to agree ; but the work will last three years and the contrac- 
tors will be able to concentrate all the spare labour of the country on 
the works when demand for labour is slack, and in this way the rate 
of P.T. 3 per cubic metre which I have allowed will be found to be 
ample. In the hill of salted marl it will be possible to employ the 
American system of excavating by the aid of water issuing from nozzles 
under pressure. By this method it will be possible to do much work at 
P.T. 2 and P.T. 3 per cubic metre as it is done in America. I have 
allowed P.T. 5 per cubic metre. To this hydraulic pressure work the 
salted marls will be specially suited, and indeed the recollection of the 
ease with which Amenemhat dug his canal though this very material 
lasted long in the memory of Egyptians. Some 1,600 years after the 
canal was excavated, Herodotus was informed that the excavated mate- 
rial was thrown into the canal and transported by the running water. 
A 12 -inch pump on the Yusufi canal lifting water on to the top of the 
hill, a number of spade men helping the water as it coursed down the 
hill and leading the liquid mud along wooden troughs into side ravines 
and depressions, and a steep slope on the western half of the hill where 
the rock had been blasted away would soon remove all the material 
required at a very low cost. I have allowed P.T. 10 per cubic metre 
for the soft limestone. Here it will be easy to work on a vertical face 
of some 7 metres, blast out the rock, carry it away on four lines of 
railway running down hill, deposit the rubble on the desert ; and as 
each 7 metres depth is completed, to begin the next 7 metres in depth 
in the same way. 
In my 1894 Report I had anticipated difficulties with the canal 
running through the salted marl. Since then I have thoroughly in- 
spected the ravines in the Fayoum and seen the El-Bats ravine where 
