The binding of the Nile and the new Soudan

THE BINDING OF THE NILE AND THE NEW SOUDAN
Mehemet Ali, from a painting in the possession of the Oriental Club.
LONDON: EDWARD ARNOLD: 1904.
BY THE HON.
SIDNEY PEEL Late Fellow of Trinity College, Oxford Author of ‘Trooper 8008 I.Y.’
I have tried to tell in outline the story of the regulation of the Nile and some of its consequences. A rash project, perhaps, for one who is not an engineer; but, then, this book is not written for engineers, and politics enter largely into it.
I have had some special opportunities of observation, and I have many friends to thank for the help which they have given me. In particular I am much indebted to the Standard , whose special correspondent in Egypt and the Soudan I had the good fortune to be during a part of 1902-1903.
Anyone who wishes to gain a real acquaintance with the principles and details of Egyptian Irrigation should read the monumental and interesting work by Sir W. Willcocks, K.C.M.G., on that subject, to which my indebtedness is large.
The standard work on the Soudan is not yet written. There is but one man who combines the necessary knowledge, experience, and attainments to do it, and he, fortunately for the Soudan, is—and will be for a long time to come—too fully occupied with his arduous and multifarious duties. I mean, of course, the present Governor-General, Sir Reginald Wingate. No official of the Soudan Government, least of all he, has leisure to write a book; but I sincerely hope that the materials for it are steadily collecting.
S. P.
PART I THE BINDING OF THE NILE
Far back in the world’s history a fracture of the earth’s crust took place in the region which is now Egypt, and the sea filled the valley as far as a point not much north of Assouan. Into this fiord ran several rivers from the high ground east and west, bearing down with them heaps of detritus, and forming small deltas like the plain of Kom-Ombos. On the sea-bottom were laid down deposits of sand and gravel, and then the land began to rise. Meantime the volcanic movements of East Central Africa had shaped the country into its present configuration, and the rivers which drained from the great lakes and swamps of the south, and those which flowed down from the high plateau on the east, combining their waters somewhere about Khartoum, pushed their marvellous course northwards, and began the creation of the fertile soil of Egypt. From this time onwards the climatic conditions must have continued very much what they are to-day. Changes, of course, there have been in the level of the land; but the sea-valley had become a river-valley, and year by year the annual flood increased the cultivable soil, and refreshed it with moisture, just as it would be doing to-day if left untrammelled by the devices of man.