The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1898-01-27
EGYPT AND THE NILE.
Wonderful System of Irrigation Now
in OperatiOn.

G. w. Stevens, in London Mail.
Egypt is the Nile. That is no epigram or
figure of speech; the street l tread on in
Cairo, the beef and potatoes l take for
Mnch-they are just sondited, organized,
Vitalized Nile. Every rod of titled land in
Egypt was washed hther from the AbySsn-
| ian mountains ana Iald down TO fertllize the
desert by the Nile. The great river gives
! not only water to a rainleSS land, 1t makes
the very soil. If the land is heartened by
| the lower water each fioodtime it Will bear
| we'll; if not, it will soon go back to desert
| again. If the water is not drained off after
| tioodtime the fiat land will become water
| logged. And if the full Nile should burst
| it's banks the land will become a lake. The
! Nile is Egypt's all in alto be trained and
| coaxed into giving the greatest possible life
and leaving behind the least possible DEATH
| Egypt is, of all others, the land of the en-
| gineer; he makes or unmakes it, enlarges
or dminishes it, according as he succeeds
or fails in managing the Nile The British
engineers in this country are making it
! quite literally, and VlSlDly ana palpaDly
making Egypt
The barrage is one of the greatest pieces
of Egypt making in the country, When
you come to walk over it, and look back on
it, and down from 1t, and UP at 1t from Jut-
! ting piers you see that 1t is not the big
| bridge it first appeared, but an enormous
| dam with locks and Weirs. In each arch are
a couple of gates, one above the other; they
! are raised or lowered by a travelling winch
| on the parapet above. The water can be
| passed under or over or between them. regu-
| lating the Nile. Regulating the Nile means
regulating the canals. East and west of the
! barrage and from its apex between Rosetta
| and Damietta branches take off three great
| canals; each makes q province. When the
river is high the gates of the barrage are
! opened and let off the water down its nat
ural channels; when it is at it's lowest, in
! early summer. the gates are closed, the
| Rosetta and Darnetta estuaries go all but
| dry The life-gving water is held up at the
| barrage and turned into the canals. You
| only realize what river by itself the Nile
! is when you understand that one of its chief
functions
TO understand better, you must know that
! there are two systems OF cultivation In
! Egypt. In Lower Egypt-that is, the Delta
and one district of Upper Egypt the land
! is watered by what are called summer
canals; in the rest of the country, the land
is watered and MANFRED together by letting
! the hcod Nile over it. On this system
| fields can be cultivated only in winter, when
| the water runs off them, between the flood
waited all the year around; sugar and cotton
can be grown, and two or three crops of
! vegetables raised in a year. The barrage
has given the necessary water for these
crops: and YOU will see the benefit of ii by
the fact that, since it has been working,
| the cotton crop alone has gone up from
little under three to well over six million
hunderweight annually Think what that
means-more than doubling the yield of the
| country II we had done nothing else In
| Egypt at all we should have justified our
selves by this work alone.
But credit where credit is due. the concep-
ton and first building of the barrage are
due to Ffenchman-Mougel Begin
Menenlet AIS time, nearly Sixty years
ago. Only II took twenty years TO make,
and even then was not finished: only the
Rosetta half had been used, and you can
see the curve in it to this day where the
vast structure bulged before the pressure
of the water. For the barrage rests on q
poor foundation of fine mud and sand; il
has an artificial floor and aprons of ma
sonry; still, under all is only mud and sand.
So in 1889 the great work was officially
declared worthleses; and then came along
Sir Colin MOncrieH and his men, and
doubled the wealth of Upper Egypt with it.
But ii is still daring work, and its founda-
tiOn is still mud and sand. and the man
who has the nursing of it has an anxious
| life. OF course. the French pray for its
bursting nightly, and prOphesy it weekly
only it has not yet burst. At high Nile
along 1t we came to a gang of natives
vociferously working at what looked like a
drill right through the bridge. They have
made holes right through il, and pressed
cement down until what went down
came up at another. So now II has a solid
floor. ii Is hoped; and the Caisse de la bette
has advanced money to build couple of
water on it.. 1t Is too vital TO Egypt even
/ to chance a breakdown.
All this about the barrage, because 1t is
! the biggest and the most benefcent and
| the easiest to see with your own eyes of
the good things which England has given
/ Egypt. Her gifts have been many-iaternal
| peace Justice honest Observation-Disclosures
days before came there was not So
much water; that means there was not so
| much Egypt What there was was turned
into the rich. on TO the pasha's fields and
l the Governors. the poor man had TO wait
and see If there was any left when they had