PUBLIC WORKS FOR EGYPT.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLI, Issue 12653, 6 September 1904, Page 6

PUBLIC WORKS FOR EGYPT.

. London, August 13. i The Foreign Office has issued a Blue Book containing an exhaustive report by Sir William Garstin upon the basin of the Upper Nil©, in which a gigantic programme of public work in Egypt is recommended. It is now well known how, for scores of miles, sudd, or river-weed marshes, block the Upper Nile. . ~".,■. Sir William Garstin estimates the cost of cutting a proper channel would be £500,000. The work is likely to have to be repeated every few years, and he therefore suggests cutting a new wide course for the White Nile from Boz to Tanfikia, a distance of over 200 miles, the probable cost of which would bo £5,500,000. By this means 80 per cent, of the water from Lakes Victoria and Albert, now lost in the swamps between Lado and Fashoda, would bo preserved. The scheme includes dams for the regulation of tho_ overflow from Victoria and Albert. Sir William also sketches great projects for the regulation of tho Blue Nile at a point several hundred miles above Khartoum. _ He proposes to'dam the river Gash, which is now dry.half the year, and in this way irrigate the plains around Kassala. The whole scheme will reclaim; the entire Soudan and secure to Egypt a constant and sufficient water supply. For the whole area between the cataracts and the Mediterranean the total cost of the scheme, including tho raising of the Assouan dam and completing the Suakin to Berber railway, ■is estimated at £21,400,000. Fifteen years is suggested as the time for completion. The irrigation works would then bring 2,650,000 more acres into cultivation in Egypt and tho Soudan, giving the former an additional revenue of £1.205,000 and the latter £500,000 per annum.