By Raising The Level Of The
Nile Sixty Feet At Every Dam, The Cataracts Would No Longer
Exist, As The Rocks Which At Present Form The Obstructions Would
Be Buried In The Depths Of The River.
At the positions of the
several dams, sluice gates and canals would conduct the shipping
either up or down the stream.
Were this principle carried out as
far as the last cataracts, near Khartoum, the Soudan would no
longer remain a desert; the Nile would become not only the
cultivator of those immense tracts that are now utterly
worthless, but it would be the navigable channel of Egypt for the
extraordinary distance of twenty-seven degrees of
latitude--direct from the Mediterranean to Gondokoro, N. lat. 4
degrees 54 minutes.
The benefits, not only to Egypt, but to civilization, would be
incalculable; those remote countries in the interior of Africa
are so difficult of access, that, although we cling to the hope
that at some future time the inhabitants may become enlightened,
it will be simply impossible to alter their present condition,
unless we change the natural conditions under which they exist.
From a combination of adverse circumstances, they are excluded
from the civilized world: the geographical position of those
desert-locked and remote countries shuts them out from personal
communication with strangers: the hardy explorer and the
missionary creep through the difficulties of distance in their
onward paths, but seldom return: the European merchant is rarely
seen, and trade resolves itself into robbery and piracy upon the
White Nile, and other countries, where distance and difficulty of
access have excluded all laws and political surveillance.
Nevertheless, throughout that desert, and neglected wilderness,
the Nile has flowed for ages, and the people upon its banks are
as wild and uncivilized at the present day as they were when the
Pyramids were raised in Lower Egypt.
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