Both The Water And The Mud Of The Nile Have
Duties To Perform,--The Water To Irrigate; The Deposit To
Fertilize; but these duties are not regularly performed:
sometimes the rush of the inundation is overwhelming, at others
it is
Insufficient; while at all times an immense proportion of
the fertilizing mud is not only wasted by a deposit beneath the
sea, but navigation is impeded by the silt. The Nile is a
powerful horse without harness, but, with a bridle in its mouth,
the fertility of Egypt might be increased to a vast extent.
As the supply of water raised by the sageer is received in a
reservoir, from which the irrigating channels radiate through the
plantations, so should great reservoirs be formed throughout the
varying levels of Egypt, from Khartoum to the Mediterranean,
comprising a distance of sixteen degrees of latitude, with a fall
of fifteen hundred feet. The advantage of this great difference
in altitude between the Nile in latitude 15 degrees 30 minutes
and the sea, would enable any amount of irrigation, by the
establishment of a series of dams or weirs across the Nile, that
would raise its level to the required degree, at certain points,
from which the water would be led by canals into natural
depressions; these would form reservoirs, from which the water
might be led upon a vast scale, in a similar manner to the
insignificant mud basins that at the present day form the
reservoirs for the feeble water-wheels.
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