The Florence tribune., 1899-04-22
10 HARNESS THE NILE.
The Greatest Engineering Enterprise or the Century and What It Means to Eeypt-Wii Turn Des-
 ert Into an AorIcu-
 tural Paradise.


 The work of damming the Nile has been begun. With a flourish of ban ners, a blare of trumpets and gather ing of English peers and Egyptian pashas the cornerstone of the great dam was recently laid by the Duke of Connaught, and now the boldest and biggest engineering feat of the century is under wav. E~vrt is lone dis tanee away from ms, and we have few interests there but Americans cannot afford to overlook this immense Anglo Egyptian enterprise. Itls the gteatsat utilitariau scheme of modern times.
 Here is what is to be done; At Assouan, where the first cataract be- gins, is to be built the great dam, a mile in length, and luther down the river, between Assouan and Cairo, are to be constructed two subsidiary dams.
 The effect on Egypt will be magical. Instead of watering only small strip of country, the great river will be held in check aud it's water led of in every direction by means of irrigation canals.
 This will transform hundreds of square miles of what is now arid desert into an agricultural paradise.
 The immediate effect of checking Fa- ther Nile in his rush toward the Med iterranean win be to form up in the Nubian desert great lake l40 miles long and mile or more in width. This will be used as a great reservoir from which water can be drawn at all times.
 Egypt has territory of 100000 square miles, nearly seven times the area of New England. But the Egypt which can sustain life and raise crops is only a ribbonlike strip of alluvial land few miles wide on each side of the Nile and measuring barely as much as the states of Rhode Island and Yer mont together. The building of the dam will rescue from the Nubian desert tract of land twice the size of Rhode Island.
 The great Napoleon observed the loss or- Crre71 71vffs ssotsr=, ,sar4d 1t veas in conse- quenee of his suggestion thae long after his death dam, or barraee, was built ten miles below Cairo This was but of trihing utility, and even it was not completed until after the English occupation of Egypt in 1882.
 The French made but poor job of their attempt. Their dam was de- clared completed in 1861, but no one ventured to use it to dam up the full pressure.
 However, in 1863 it was thought that the dam by this time would have been consolidated, and some venturesome engineer closed the sluices and let the water rise. Immediately the unfortu- nate barrier cracked in several places and began actually to move down stream. The sluiees were all quickly opened, and the movement stopped,
 Various experts were called in dur ing the next few years. Time went on. A costly staff was maintained to keep the sluices always open and to be con stantly repairing the whole work.
 Then came events in 1882, and with them the British arrived upon upon the scene, and Lord Dufferin was sent from Constantinople to advise plan of action to save the country. He patched up the lower dam so we'll that it is still in use.
 The gate which is to stop the "tears of Isis' is to cost about $25, GOO, ,000 and will be completed, so the British contractors say, by July 1, 1903. It will be built of the same kind of gra- nite as that in Cleopatrs's Needle now in Central park Moreover, it will be taken from the same quarries as those from which the tones of the temples of Philae were built. In places the dam will 75 feet high and, with its approaches, 14 miles long The dif- ference n water level above and below the dam will be 46 feet. The | top of the dam will be used as a bridge way. It will be 30 or 40 feet wide and across it will pass camel trains and other traffic of the region.
 Already about 5000 natives are at work quarrying and hauling rock for the foundations. Besides these are be tween 800 and 500 skilled European workmen and officials. They go about their work stolidly and energetically They are troubled with no nonsense about barring the path of the sacred river on whose wa ters Moses was era | dled and Cleopatra rowed in her barge No dam like this has ever been built In the first place, none for impounding water has ever been attempted on any river approaching the Nile in size. IT 1 the second place, it is to be dam and sluiceway, as occasion demands. Te l try to hold back Father Nile at flood time would be vain. For severa 1 months in tha year the river rnust ht