In Upper Egypt cotton-sowing begins at the same time, but the harvest is earlier. Sugar-cane is sown in March, and the canes are cut from December 15 to March 15. Sometimes the same roots are left in the ground, and produce another crop in the second year; but this is never of such quality as the first, and the land has probably to be left fallow after it. Sugar, therefore, though nominally more valuable than cotton per acre, is more costly in the long-run. It is watered every twelve or fifteen days. The other crops are the summer and flood sorghum, grown on the berms or in tracts within the basins, and irrigated by shadoofs and water-wheels about once every ten days; and the wheat, beans, clover, and barley, in the basins. The cereals are usually not watered at all, but the clover follows the same course as in Lower Egypt.
Summing up these results, we find that the principal crops in Lower Egypt are cotton and rice. The cotton needs irrigation about once in twenty days, the rice once in ten days. To provide this amount of water, a canal should discharge (after allowance has been made for wastage) 22 cubic metres in twenty-four hours per acre of cotton, and 40 cubic metres per acre of rice. That is to say, 1 cubic metre per second will suffice for 4,000 acres of cotton and 2,150 acres of rice. In Upper Egypt rice is only a flood crop, and cotton and sugar need about 25 to 30 per cent. more water than in the Delta, owing to the greater loss from evaporation—that is to say, 1 cubic metre per second will only suffice for 3,000 acres of cotton or sugar. During the winter the land throughout Egypt requires on the average a watering once in forty days. But, as we have seen, it is the summer supply for the cotton that is the really important thing. We shall see later what the effect of the reservoir is likely to be in safeguarding and extending these interests.
CHAPTER V
THE DELTA BARRAGE AND THE ENGLISH ENGINEERS
At the date of the English occupation the Delta Barrage was generally thought to be like the whole fabric of Egyptian Government, rotten to the core. And so indeed it seemed. No one had ever dared to use, or apparently even to think of using, the Barrage on the Damietta or right-hand branch at all. The history of the Barrage on the Rosetta branch was hardly less inglorious. In 1863 its gates were closed for the first time, but about ten of its arches began to settle, and ominous cracks showed. Eventually the threatened part was surrounded by a coffer-dam, and from 1872 to 1883 it managed to hold up about 1 metre. But even that was precarious. Commission after Commission had condemned the structure; it was felt that at any moment it might give way, especially if called upon to bear a greater strain, and it was actually the settled policy of the Government to rely on huge and costly pumping-stations instead. It was a paltry result after the expenditure of £4,000,000 and so much labour.
Then, not for the first or last time, the Anglo-Indians came to the rescue of Africa. Sir Evelyn Baring himself (now Lord Cromer) during his service as Financial Member of the Council in India, must have been impressed by the enormous importance of irrigation. It would not be difficult to find many points of resemblance between his character and that of one of the greatest, if not the greatest, of the rulers of India, Lord Lawrence, different as were their spheres of work; but certainly they were alike in this. As Lord Lawrence supported Arthur Cotton in his engineering work, so Lord Cromer supported Colin Scott-Moncrieff and the band of trusty lieutenants—Willcocks, Garstin, Ross, Brown, Foster, Western, and Reid—who came with him. Fortunately for Egypt, these men, trained in the best school of irrigation in the world, possessed not only the highest scientific skill and knowledge, but were also animated by the best spirit of the empire-building Englishman. Deep in them lay the earnest wish and determination, far stronger even than their enthusiasm and love for their profession, to alleviate the lot of the unhappy peasantry of Egypt. It was this heartfelt sympathy for the wrongs of the fellaheen, ground down by the intolerable burden of the corvée, that sustained them in their ceaseless labours and enabled them to pass successfully through those dark days, when the air was full of forebodings of failure and disaster, whose fulfilment would have pleased so many.
The Barrage is situated, as has been said, a little way back from the point of the Delta. It is really two Barrages, one on the left or Rosetta branch of the Nile, with sixty-one arches, 465 metres in length, and the other on the Damietta branch with seventy-one arches, 535 metres in length. Between the two runs a revetment wall across the intervening tongue of land, 1,000 metres in length. From a distance it resembles a bridge of rather fanciful design, with the arches set unusually close together, and, indeed, for a great part of its career the functions of a bridge were the only ones it performed. The tongue of land between has been converted into beautiful gardens, planted with shady trees and many shrubs and flowers, and even a greensward resembling grass. Altogether, it is one of the most delightful and beautiful spots in Egypt, besides being one of the most useful. Here is the starting-point of the great feeder canals which irrigate the Delta provinces. On the left, facing north, is the Rayah Behera, which supplies the province of Behera, to the left of the Rosetta branch. Between the two Barrages is the head of the Rayah Menoufia, the canal which feeds the two provinces of Menoufia and Gharbia, lying between the two arms of the river; while on the right is the Rayah Tewfiki, which, with its supplementary canals, Ismailia, Sharkia, and Basusia, supplies the three eastern provinces of the Delta, Kalyubia, Sharkia, and Dakalia. All these canals are navigable, as well as the branches of the river, and provided with locks for that purpose. These great waterways are free to all, and few of the results of British occupation are more appreciated in Egypt. Formerly all craft upon the Nile had to pay toll on passing under a bridge, which did nothing but hinder their progress, while those for whose convenience it was made passed without charge overhead.
A Barrage, as its name implies, is designed to completely bar the bed of the river, so as to enable it to feed the canals at a higher level than would otherwise be the case, and also to allow the flood to pass through it easily. It needs, therefore, a very solid foundation from bank to bank, on which the arches which hold the movable sluice-gates can be securely planted. Its construction is, therefore, a very different and much more difficult matter than merely throwing a bridge over the stream, even a bridge with several spans. The difficulty is all the greater when, as here, the bed of the river offers nothing more substantial than shifting sands to build upon. It was for this reason that Linant wished to build the Barrages at leisure in the dry, and then divert the river from its old channels, and lead it through when they were completed. But Mougel chose to build his in the existing bed of the river, thereby increasing the difficulties of actual construction, though from other points of view there was much to be said for this plan. At the site of the Rosetta Barrage the bed of the river was not of uniform depth; he therefore filled up the deepest part of the channel, which lay on the right, with loose stones, so as to bring it up to the level of the bottom on the left-hand side. No cement was used in laying down this barrier, but the Nile mud filled the interstices and made it water-tight; when finished, this barrier was 60 metres wide and 10 deep at the deepest part. On this and on the natural sand he built a platform 46 metres in width and 3·5 metres thick, composed of concrete overlaid with brick and stonework. On the platform he raised his arches and piers, all built of brick. Each of the openings for the sluice-gates, sixty-one in number, was 5 metres wide. Like an iceberg, that part of the Barrage which is visible above water is much less than the invisible part below. To further strengthen the structure and keep it in its place, a mass of rubble pitching or loose stones was thrown into the river on the downstream side. This talus was 3 to 16 metres in depth, and at one part extended 50 metres downstream in a kind of tongue, narrowing down to 2 metres. The Damietta Barrage was built on a similar plan, but its downstream talus was not so large. Unfortunately, the concrete used for the platform was inferior, chiefly owing to the fact that Mehemet Ali, growing impatient at the slow progress of the work, ordered a certain amount of material to be laid down every day, and laid down it had to be in defiance of all engineering requirements. The consequence was that, as soon as the Rosetta Barrage was subjected to strain, ten of the arches on the left-hand side, where the platform was laid down on sand only, settled and cracked. It was patched up by surrounding the injured arches with a coffer-dam; but the Damietta Barrage never even had its gates put in.
Such was the structure with which the English engineers had to deal. Even as it stands to-day, it cannot, of course, compare in magnitude with many works upon the Indian rivers; but as regards the difficulties to be overcome, it can compare with almost any in the world. It would have been far easier to rebuild the whole thing from the beginning, but at the time the necessary funds were not forthcoming. They had to take the old structure, with all its imperfections, and screw it up to work as it was. The country could not afford to cut off the summer water-supply of the Delta while the repairs were in progress. The cotton-crop had always to be thought of. And the period of the year during which the summer canals required to be supplied was the only period during which work could be done, for once the flood came down all operations were at an end. It is the glory of the English engineers that, working under these conditions and with untrained workmen, they succeeded in their task.
The Government was already paying many thousands a year to a company for pumping water out of the Rosetta branch into the canals during the summer, and the first thing Sir Colin Scott Moncrieff had to do on his arrival was to decide upon a scheme which had been prepared for erecting new pumping-stations at an initial expense of about three-quarters of a million, and involving an annual expenditure of at least another quarter of a million. So hopeless were the prospects of the Barrage assumed to be, that even this expenditure, with a doubtful result, was thought preferable to repairing it. Sir Colin’s arrival was only in the nick of time. He determined to see what could be done with the resources at hand. The new pumping-station scheme was set aside, and Mr. Willcocks was put in charge of the Barrage.