IRRIGATION IN EGYPT.

Timaru Herald, Volume LXIV, Issue 3559, 8 May 1901, Page 3

IRRIGATION IN EGYPT.

AN ARTIFICIAL LAKE. Particulars are to hand concerning one of the dams across the Nile, part of the great engineering works being executed by Messrs John Aird and Son. The vast undertaking—unsurpassed in magniture and difficulty by any similar ei'gineering feat of modern times —is now in an advanced stage. And the object of it? Briefly, the better; irrigation of Middle, and Upper Egypt.' At present, the; • cultivated soil consists of! a belt of land on either side of the river extending as far as, and no farther, than, the line reached by the waters at High Nile. The rest is arid, unproductive sand. The Nile waters are peculiarly rich in a sediment invaluable for agricultural purposes, and yet every year enough Nile water and soil to create several Egypts are allowed to run into the Mediterranean. It is to impound this water that a great wall of granite is being built on the southern side of the first cataract at Assuah. The wall stretches'

from the right bank of the Nile to the left, and, when completed,' will rise 90ft above the level of the river at low water. The top of it will be as wide as Fleet street, and will accommodate as much traffic. .- The wall is pierced by sluices. They number 180.' The great steel doors with which they are provided will be worked by machinery at once enormously powerful and yet so delicate that a child could loose millions of gallons of this water which is to be Egypt's salvation. At some periods of the year 900,000 tons of water will rush through the sluices every

minute. The dam will bottle up 1,000,000, 000 tons of water; but the effect of the wall will be apparent over 144 miles of the river, in other words, a lake 144 miles long will be formed. The cost of ■'. the scheme has been fixed at £s,ooo,ooo;but' the Egyptian Government will not' be asked to pay a sixpence until the work has been completed. The settling of this little bill will extend over a period of five years, so that Egypt is getting her colossal dam on the same system as the thrifty housewives get their_s_ewing machines—the deferred payment system. It will -prove a good bargain for Egypt, for it is cal-' culated that England is virtually making the land of the Pharaohs a present of something like £80,000,000. In addition to the great wall at Assuan, a subsidiary dam is being built at Assuit. • On the former 12,000 men are employed, chiefly natives. TEey receive between three and four piastres a day, or about 5s a; week, which is usually twice as much as they earn. ■ Oni pay day-the money is brought in l bullion on camels across the desert from the Assuan bank, and it is an interesting sight to see the patient bearers kneel down while their precious burden is distributed among the eager thousands of jabbering happy toilers. The stone for the great wall is being obtained from the quarries - of which the Temples of Philae are believed to have been built, —the unhappy Philae which, when the dam is completed, will be submerged and partly disappear from sight for the first time in its three thousand years of existence. The granite blocks that are being quarried for this, the first great engineering achievement of the 20th century, bear the marks of wedges, used 30 centuries ago. It may, ber—nay, it; seems almost inevitable, hi such a changeful country—that some day we may go the way that the Pharaohs and the Pfersians, the Ptolemies arid Romans went ini long ago; but we'shall leave;'behind us an enduring monument to the enterprise, the wisdom,, and the beneficence of, England's occupation in Egypt.