BRITISH WORK IN EGPYT.

Evening Post, Volume XLIX, Issue 16, 19 January 1895, Page 1 (Supplement)

BRITISH WORK IN EGPYT.

A marvellous story of British enterprise and organising skill was told b) Sir Colin Moncrieff in a lecture he delivered at the Working Men'; College, London, on Egypt and the Nile. Sir Colin described in detail the measures taken by English engineers to improve the irrigation system of the Lower Nile, and tc regulate the water supply. He explained how the great barrage acrostthe river was repaired under' hitdirection, — and a truly marvellouf piece of work it was. The barrage is a long dam or low bridge of manj arches, intended to 'impound and hold up the waters of the life-giving river when they are to low to overtop the high banks and flood the country. It was built by French engineers' in 1861, but never used; and in 1867 great cracks split tho structure from top to bottom. Sir Colin and his assistants repaired the cracks with cement, and laid bare the foundations by pumping out the water round it, and so made a solid base of concrete for the huge fabric of brick and earth, with the result that the dam has been able to resist the pressure of the flood against it and hold up the river securely until millions of tons of water have been poured into the irrigation canals, and the value of Egyptian cotton crop is increased annually by an amount representing fife times the whole cost of Sir Oolin's works. Not the, least extraordinary item in the story is the fact that it was found necessary to shift the Nile bodily, so that it now runs a quarter of a mile east oi its old course. If Egypt owed nothing else- to the British occupation, its debt to Sir Colin and his engineers would be incalculable.