When We Regard The General Aspect Of The Soudan, It Is Extreme
Wretchedness; The Rainfall Is Uncertain And Scanty, Thus The
Country Is A Desert, Dependent Entirely Upon Irrigation.
Although
cultivation is simply impossible without a supply of water, one
of the most onerous taxes is that upon
The sageer or water-wheel,
with which the fields are irrigated on the borders of the Nile.
It would appear natural that, instead of a tax, a premium should
be offered for the erection of such means of irrigation, which
would increase the revenue by extending cultivation, the produce
of which might bear an impost. With all the talent and industry
of the native Egyptians, who must naturally depend upon the
waters of the Nile for their existence, it is extraordinary that
for thousands of years they have adhered to their original simple
form of mechanical irrigation, without improvement.
If any one will take the trouble to watch the action of the
sageer or water-wheel, it must strike him as a most puny effort
to obtain a great result, that would at once suggest an extension
of the principle. The sageer is merely a wheel of about twenty
feet diameter, which is furnished with numerous earthenware jars
upon its exterior circumference, that upon revolving perform the
action of a dredger, but draw to the surface water instead of
mud. The wheel, being turned by oxen, delivers the water into a
trough which passes into a reservoir, roughly fashioned with
clay, from which, small channels of about ten inches in width
radiate through the plantation. The fields, divided into squares
like a chess-board, are thus irrigated by a succession of minute
aqueducts. The root of this principle is the reservoir. A certain
steady volume of water is required, from which the arteries shall
flow throughout a large area of dry ground; thus, the reservoir
insures a regular supply to each separate channel.
In any civilized country, the existence of which depended upon
the artificial supply of water in the absence of rain, the first
engineering principle would suggest a saving of labour in
irrigation: that, instead of raising the water in small
quantities into reservoirs, the river should raise its own waters
to the required level.
Having visited every tributary of the Nile during the
explorations of nearly five years, I have been struck with the
extraordinary fact that, although an enormous amount of wealth is
conveyed to Egypt by the annual inundations of the river, the
force of the stream is entirely uncontrolled. From time
immemorial, the rise of the Nile has been watched with intense
interest at the usual season, but no attempt has been made to
insure a supply of water to Egypt during all seasons.
The mystery of the Nile has been dispelled; we have proved that
the equatorial lakes supply the main stream, but that the
inundations are caused by the sudden rush of waters from the
torrents of Abyssinia in July, August, and September; and that
the soil washed down by the floods of the Atbara is at the
present moment silting up the mouths of the Nile, and thus
slowly, but steadily, forming a delta beneath the waters of the
Mediterranean, on the same principle that created the fertile
Delta of Egypt.
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