Barrage was lowered fourteen feet from the original plan in the hope of preserving them, and so on the boundary line between upper Egypt and Nubia or ancient Ethiopia, now generally called the Soudan. A visit to "the works" and the Barrage is one of the occupations of the great crowd of sightseers and semi-invalids who dwell in this favoured spot, which has beyond doubt the finest climate in the world. By the courtesy of the eminent government engineers, Messrs. Maurice Fitzmaurice and Louis Neville, who were also associated in building the great Forth bridge, I was taken in hand by the latter and shown this stupendous work. It was begun in February, 1898, and was contracted to be completed in about six years at a cost of ten million dollars, payable, including interest, in thirty halfyearly payments of about four hundred thousand dollars each. Its foundations rest on the solid granite ledges, for which this spot is famous, and the materials of construction are from the quarries which have for six thousand years supplied Egypt with its most durable stone for temples, tombs, statues, and pyramids. Its dimensions, roughly stated, are as follows: Total length, a little more than one and one-half miles; extreme height and depth, including foundations, about 120 feet; extreme width at base, about eighty feet; width at top, which forms a roadway across the Nile, protected by heavy parapet walls, twenty-five feet. Its contents are about 1,250,000 tons of masonry, and the sluices, 180 in number, with their frames, will take about ten thousand tons of steel and iron. All of the masonry in sight is of rough hammered granite, quarried in massive blocks. The interior is of granite splinters of good size, solidly cemented together. The sluices through which the whole of the volume of the Nile, even during the inundation, must run, are at various heights, that the water may be loosed or held at pleasure. During the inundation, when the water is charged with its fertilising mud, all the water which can be possibly passed through the lowest sluices must go that way, that the life-blood of Egypt may not be stopped in its way, and the fellaheen robbed of his manure, and the lake at the back of the Barrage become filled with the silt. No water will ever pass over the dam. It is, of course, a fine engineering problem to provide sufficient sluiceway for all the water which heaven may send down from the lakes of equatorial Africa and the mountains of Abyssinia. Were upper Egypt and the Soudan subject to rainy seasons, it would doubtless be an impossibility, but rains here are so infrequent as to be practically left out of the account, not only in engineering works, but in the dwelling-places of the people. When one comes, it leaves them stunned and almost helpless. For instance, a washout on the railway last month left this section cut off from the lower world for ten days, except for the infrequent steamers bringing and taking tourists. We were in our hotel, calmly informed that the world had not supplied us with butter or eggs, and we frequently ran out of ice. When the great electric plant in connection with the Barrage is completed the latter can be manufactured at a minimum cost, and it is expected to revolutionise this section. The increase in the price of land has many times paid the cost of the Cairo Barrage, and it is estimated that the Assouan and Assiout Barrages will add to the annual income of the country almost immediately upwards of thirty million dollars, and ultimately many times this vast amount. Should the result prove anything like the figures estimated, it will be easy to extend the system to the other cataracts, and doubtless Egypt will soon become one of the richest, as it is now one of the most fertile, spots on the face of the globe. It is estimated that the water impounded by the Assouan Barrage, after all lower Egypt is fertilised by the inunda tion, will amount to many billion gallons, and will raise the level of the river for about 120 miles. The contractors have been favoured by two seasons of low Nile since they began their work, and in consequence they are about one year ahead of time on their estimates. This will prove an important factor in their profits and in the ultimate advantage to the country from its early completion. It is now expected that the foundations will be completed before the next flood, which comes in August. All of the river is now running through the sluices, and coffer-dams are built for the remainder of the foundations, and are nearly all pumped out. An important, and, indeed, absolutely necessary adjunct to the Barrage, is the canal, which is built outside of the bed of the river in the solid ledge on the west or Sahara side of the river. The desert comes down to the river on both sides at this point. This canal is one and a half miles long, just about the same length as the dam, and is of sufficient width and depth to accommodate the steamers and dahabiyehs plying on the Nile. It is fitted with a series of four locks about four hundred feet long and thirty-five feet wide, and it will spoil the occupation of the hundreds of wild-eyed Nubians who used to levy blackmail on the tourists who wished to pass up or down the cataract in boats or dahabiyehs. It will save great delays, and the transshipment of vast quantities of merchandise, and tend to equalise prices and stimulate enterprise throughout the whole land, and thus prove a blessing to the nation. A trifling fraction of the sums spent by our Cousin John in killing a handful of patriotic, if mistaken, Boers, would make the Nile valley the garden spot of the world. And John can afford it, too, for he has made a cool, clean profit of about one hundred million dollars on his Suez Canal shares, which the bankrupt Egypt had to part with at a forced sale. It must be admitted, however, that this is the |