The waters of the Nile, that now rush impetuously at
certain seasons with overwhelming violence, while at other
seasons
They are exhausted, might be so controlled that they
should never be in excess, neither would they be reduced to a
minimum in the dry season; but the enormous volume of water
heavily charged with soil, that now rushes uselessly into the
sea, might be led throughout the deserts of Nubia and Libya, to
transform them into cotton fields that would render England
independent of America. There is no fiction in this idea; it is
merely the simple and commonplace fact, that with a fall of
fifteen hundred feet in a thousand miles, with a river that
supplies an unlimited quantity of water and mud at a particular
season, a supply could be afforded to a prodigious area, that
would be fertilized not only by irrigation, but by the annual
deposit of soil from the water, allowed to remain upon the
surface. This suggestion might be carried out by gradations; the
great work might be commenced by a single dam above the first
cataract at Assouan, at a spot where the river is walled in by
granite hills; at that place, the water could be raised to an
exceedingly high level, that would command an immense tract of
country. As the system became developed, similar dams might be
constructed at convenient intervals that would not only bring
into cultivation the neighbouring deserts, but would facilitate
the navigation of the river, that is now impeded, and frequently
closed, by the numerous cataracts.
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