528 
DIVERSION OF THE NILE. 
Cajpe Cod Canal. 
The opening of a navigable cut through the narrow neck 
which separates the southern part of Cape Cod Bay in Massa¬ 
chusetts from the Atlantic, was long ago suggested, and there 
are few coast improvements on the Atlantic shores of the United 
States which are recommended by higher considerations of 
utility. It would save the most important coasting trade of 
the United States the long and dangerous navigation around 
Cape Cod, afford a new and safer entrance to Boston harbor 
for vessels from Southern j>orts, secure a choice of passages, 
thus permitting arrivals upon the coast and departures from it 
at periods when wind and weather might otherwise prevent 
them, and furnish a most valuable internal communication in 
case of coast blockade by a foreign power. The difficulties of 
the undertaking are no doubt formidable, but the expense of 
maintenance and the uncertainty of the effects of currents set¬ 
ting through the new strait are still more serious objections. 
Diversion of the Nile. 
Perhaps the most remarkable project of great physical 
change, proposed or threatened in earlier ages, is that of the 
diversion of the Rile from its natural channel, and the turning 
of its current into either the Libyan desert or the Red Sea. 
The Ethiopian or Abyssinian princes more than once menaced 
the Memlouk sultans with the execution of this alarming pro¬ 
ject, and the fear of so serious an evil is said to have induced 
the Moslems to conciliate the Abyssinian kings by large pres¬ 
ents, and by some concessions to the oppressed Christians of 
Egypt,* Indeed, Arabic historians affirm than it in the tenth 
* “ Some haue writte, that by certain kings inhabiting aboue, the Nilus 
should there be stopped; & at a time prefixt, let loose vpon a certaine 
tribute payd them by the Aegyptians. The error springing perhaps fro a 
truth (as all wandring reports for the most part doe) in that the Sultan 
doth pay a certaine annuall summe to the Abissin Emperour for not diuert- 
ing the course of the Kiuer, which (they say) he may, or impouerish it at 
the least,”— George Sandys, A Relation of a Journey, etc., p. 98. 
