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give relief to the Nile, a relief which will be much appreciated by 
the whole country from Beni Suef to the sea, and especially by 
Cairo. 
I have already stated that the Damietta branch is especially danger- 
ous and unfit to act as an escape under existing conditions. That 
branch could be regulated on at its head and treated like a canal. 
Thanks to Sir Hanbury Brown’s initiative the Barrages can be regul- 
ated on in flood as well as in summer, and by lowering the supply in 
the Damietta branch and turning the surplus down the Rosetta branch, 
the latter would become the flood escape of the Nile. It might be 
trained as Mr. Eads suggested that rivers should be treated. 
Mr. Eads’ argument is very clear. He insists that rivers eat away 
their banks in places, not owing to the direct action of the water but 
by the alterations in the velocity of the current. When the river 
water is charged with sediment to its full carrying capacity it cannot 
take up more unless the rate of current be increased. If the channel 
be nearly uniform the river water cannot eat away any of its banks. 
If, however, the channel is varying, the silt deposits in the wide 
sections, and the water, free of some of its sediment, is ready to eat 
more. It is this alternate dropping silt and eating away of earth which 
does the harm. To treat the Rosetta branch according to Mr. Eads 
it would be necessary to fix the top width to be worked to, at say 
550 metres. The river could be brought to this uniform top width 
by building light inexpensive permeable spurs on the sandy shoals. 
The land between the spurs would become cultivated and such river 
training would pay the Government, which taxes all cultivated land ; 
it would even pay handsomely for any company to undertake the work 
once the rule about foreshores was understood. The Government 
would, however, always succeed; when it could not sell, it could always 
tax. Such training would permanently lower the flood. 
In addition to the above it would be necessary to complete the sys- 
tem of spurs begun in 1884, and to throw back the banks as already 
recommended. It has been estimated that the completion of this work 
would cost £900,000 for spurs and banks, while the training works 
would pay for themselves in addition to greatly improving the channel 
and lowering the level of the flood. 
It may be humiliating to make the confession, but from B.C. 2,200 
to the Arab invasion of Egypt in A.D. 640, while Lake Moeris 
performed its allotted task and the Nile possessed training works such 
