Arizona republican., 1903-03-13
CURRENT
 COMM ENr
The Assouan Dam.


 The great dam at Assouan, built to impound the waters of the Nile and finished in the latter part of last year,
 has been frequently described, but it is such a stupendous engineering feat and means so much to Egypt that interest 1 in its probable effects on the land of 1 the PharaohS continues. One of the latest articles on this subject appears ! in the current number of the North American Review, "The New Nile Res ervoir," by MT. Frederic Courtland Penfield. As Egypt is practically rain less country the fertility of its soil IS
 entirely dependent on the waters of the
 Nile. For four months of the year the river is in flood and inundates hundreds of miles of territory, but for the other eight months the growing crops must
 be irrigated artiiicially. After the Mo- l hammedan conquest this was nearly all done by manual or animal labor, | the water being raised from the river | to the level of the land by the most primitive contrivances. The results of such methods of necessity were very 1 limited, although it is regarded as q | conservative statement to say that
  was engaged in summer in water-holst- i ing, and out of more than four hundred I thousand square miles. the area of i Egypt as it appears on the maps, only 1 about ten thousand five hundred square miles. a narrow strip bordering the l Nile on either bank. could be brought under cultivation. Works for the stor- age of water on a small scale were un- dertaken in Mehemet Ali's time with eminently satisfactory results. The | barrage, near Cairo, built by French i engineers and reconstructed under the | British regime, is estimated to have drawn into the state treasury in land 1 taxes nearly ten million dollars annu- 1 ally for thirty years. besides making | possible cotton crop worth fifty mil 1 lion dollars year.
 | The effects of this object lesson were not lost, and it was determined. if mod ern engineering skill could solve the problem, to utilize the inexhaustible water supply constantly running to waste in irrigating the desert which only needs sufficient moisture to become | wonderfully productive. A careful study of existing conditions resulted in
 the selection of Assouan. where the Nile | is three hundred and thirty feet above | the level of the Mediterranean. as the 1 site for the great dam. By it a lake will be created possibly three times larger in superficial area than Lake Ge- neva in which it is estimated that there | will be stored two hundred and thirty four billion three hundred million gal Ions, or approximately billion tons of water, the distribution of which will be 1 all under perfect control. This enor- nous reservoir, it is believed, will in- l crease the cultivable area of Egype one-fifth The cost of the dam is reck- oned at twelve and half million dol lars and the annual increase In the earning power of the country at little more so that the work is an investment which will pay for itself every year. Be sides these benefits the dam also. per mits the construction of il canal. with :, series of locks. around the First Cat aract of the Nile, the navigation Of which was possible only with great diff 1 fculty at high water and utterly inn practicable at low. Other reservoirs. it | Is predicted by some, will eventually l be constructed higher up the, river un- | til there is string of them reaching to Berber Khartoum and possibly even to. the Victoria NyanZa.-Providence Journal.