Page:EB1911 - Volume 14.djvu/882

Rh river rises, these crops, which often form a very important part of the year’s produce and are termed Nabári, are still in the ground, and they require water in moderate and regulated quantities, in contradistinction to the wholesale flooding of the flats beyond. Fig. 3 will serve to explain this system of irrigation, the firm lines representing canals, the dotted lines embankments. It will be seen, beginning on the east or right bank of the river, that a high-level canal from an upper system is carried past a steep slope, where perhaps it is cut entirely out of rock, and it divides into two. The right branch waters all the desert slopes within its reach and level. The left branch passes, by a syphon aqueduct, under what is the main canal of the system, taken from the river close at hand (and therefore at a lower level). This left branch irrigates the Nabári on the high lands bordering the river. In years of very favourable flood this high-level canal would not be wanted at all; the irrigation could be done from the main canal, and with this great advantage, that the main canal water would carry with it much more fertilizing matter than would be got from the tail of the high-level canal, which left the river perhaps 25 m. up. The main canal flows freely over the flats C and D, and, if the flood is good, over B and part of A. It is carried round the next desert point, and to the north becomes the high-level canal. The masonry works required for this system are a syphon to pass the high level under the main canal near its head, bridges fitted with sluices where each canal passes under an embankment, and an escape weir at the tail of the system, just south of the desert point, to return surplus water to the river. Turning to the left bank, there is the same high-level canal from the upper system irrigating the basins K, P and L, as well as the large basin E in such years as it cannot be irrigated from the main canal. Here there are two main canals—one following the river, irrigating a series of smaller basins, and throwing out a branch to its left, the other passing under the desert slopes and supplying the basins F, G, H and S. For this system two syphons will be required near the head, regulating bridges under all the embankments, and an escape weir back into the river.

In the years following 1888 about 100 new masonry works of this kind were built in Upper Egypt, nearly 400 m. of new canal were dug, and nearly 300 m. of old canal were enlarged and deepened. The result has been, as already stated, that with a complete failure of the Nile flood the loss to the country has been trifling compared with that of 1877.

The first exception in Upper Egypt to the basin system of irrigation was due to the Khedive Ismail. The khedive, having acquired vast estates in the provinces of Assiut, Miniah, Beni-Suef and the Fayúm, resolved to grow sugar-cane on a very large scale, and with this object constructed a very important perennial canal, named the Ibrahimia, taking out of the left bank of the Nile at the town of Assiut, and flowing parallel to the river for about 200 m., with an important branch which irrigates the Fayúm. This canal was badly constructed, and by entirely blocking the drainage of the valley did a great deal of harm to the lands. Most of its defects had been remedied, but one remained. There being at its head no weir across the Nile, the water in the Ibrahimia canal used to rise and fall with that of the river, and so the supply was apt to run short during the hottest months, as was the case with the canals of Lower Egypt before the barrage was built. To supply the Ibrahimia canal at all during low Nile, it had been necessary to carry on dredging operations at an annual cost of about £12,000. This has now been rectified, in the same way as in Lower Egypt, by the

construction of a weir across the Nile, intended to give complete control over the river and to raise the water-surface 8.2 ft. The Assiut weir is constructed on a design very similar to that of the barrage in Lower Egypt. It consists of a bridge of 111 arches, each 5 metres span, with piers of 2 metres thickness. In each arch are fitted two gates. There is a lock 80 metres long and 16 metres wide at the left or western end of the weir, and adjoining it are the regulating sluices of the Ibrahimia canal. The Assiut weir across the Nile is just about half a mile long. The work was begun at the end of 1898 and finished early in 1902—in time to avert over a large area the disastrous effects which would otherwise have resulted from the low Nile of that year. The money value of the crops saved by the closing of the weir was not less than £E690,000. The conversion of the lands north of Assiut from basin to perennial irrigation began immediately after the completion of the Assiut weir and was finished by the end of 1908. To render the basin lands of the Kena province independent of the flood being bad or good, another barrage was built across the Nile at Esna at a cost of £1,000,000. This work was begun in 1906 and completed in 1909.

These works, as well as that in Lower Egypt, are intended to raise the water-surface above it, and to control the distribution of its supply, but in no way to store that supply. The idea of ponding up the superfluous flood discharge of the river is not a new one, and if Herodotus is to be believed,

it was a system actually pursued at a very early period of Egyptian history, when Lake Moeris in the Fayúm was filled at each Nile flood, and drawn upon as the river ran down. When British engineers first undertook the management of Egyptian irrigation many representations were made to them of the advantage of storing the Nile water; but they consistently maintained that before entering on that subject it was their duty to utilize every drop of the water at their disposal. This seemed all the more evident, as at that time financial reasons made the construction of a costly Nile dam out of the question. Every year, however, between 1890 and 1902 the supply of the Nile during May and June was actually exhausted, no water at all flowing then out into the sea. In these years, too, owing to the extension of drainage works, the irrigable area of Egypt was greatly enlarged, so that if perennial cultivation was at all to be increased, it was necessary to increase the volume of the river, and this could only be done by storing up the flood supply. The first difficulty that presented itself in carrying this out, was that during the months of highest flood the Nile is so charged with alluvial matter that to pond it up then would inevitably lead to a deposit of silt in the reservoir, which would in no great number of years fill it up. It was found, however, that the flood water was comparatively free from deposit by the middle of November, while the river was still so high that, without injuring the irrigation, water might go on being stored up until March. Accordingly, when it was determined to construct a dam, it was decided that it should be supplied with sluices large enough to discharge unchecked the whole volume of the river as it comes down until the middle of November, and then to begin the storage.

The site selected for the great Nile dam was at the head of the First Cataract above Assuan. A dyke of syenite granite here crosses the valley, so hard that the river had nowhere scoured a deep channel through it, and so it was found possible to construct the dam entirely in the open air, without the