Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 1.djvu/543

 mmOATION— INDUSTRIES. 489 Irrigation. For the future of Egyptian agriculture the most important question is that connected with the cfRcicnt irrigation of the land. It is naturally felt by many economists that the Nile waters, which might be so largely utilised in converting desert spaces into arable tracts, should no longer bo allowed to run waste in the Mediterranean. Since the beginning of the present century much has been done to attain this result. The network of canals has been extended in all directions ; the so-called " nili " channels, formerly flooded from the main stream only during the periodical inundations, have been transformed to " sefi " canals, which dispense the fecundating fluid uninterruptedly throughout the whole year ; the primitive and somewhat rude methods of drawing water have been supplemented, if not altogether i*eplaced, by powerful steam-engines, by which the irrigating streams are raised to a higher level.* The works carried out at the Sadieh barrage have unfortunately not proved entirely satisfactory, and some alarm has even been caused by the suggestion of further operations intended to retain the waters above the Silsileh gorge. If executed such an undertaking might, it is feared, utterly ruin the cultivated tracts situated in higher reaches between that point and the neighbourhood of Assuan. The fertilising alluvia now carried down to the plains of the delta might also be arrested above the gorge, while the waters lodged in the derived canals might become gradually more brackish, as has, in fact, already happened in the lateral branches of the liamudi and Ibrahimieh districts, where some formerly productive lands have had to be abandoned in consequence of the increased salinity of the irrigating streams. For the same reason the sugar plantations of Upper Egvpt and the Fayum are no longer cultivated, it being found impossible to get rid of the salt with which they have become superabundantly charged. Industries. In the agricultural districts we frequently see the ancient methods of tillage handed down from the time of the Pharaohs still practised without modification side by side with the modern processes introduced from Western Europe. In the same way, by the side of the industrial methods inherited from the ancient Egyptians and maintained in the spirit of routine resulting from long usage, the native industries also present processes of more recent date introduced by the Arab and Syrian conquerors of the land. Many factories on a large scale have also in still more recent times been established and conducted by European capitalists and engineers. The contrast is thus everywhere presented between an Egypt of the Pharaohs, • Nili Canals n 18A0 8,000 milea. Sea „ 2,000 „ Steam Pump* in 1880 600 Sakiehs in 1880 30,000 bbadufs „ 70,000