The financial difficulty remained. In spite of the prosperity of Egypt, she is, as everyone acquainted with her history is aware, bound hand and foot by international fetters in matters financial. The Caisse de la Dette, founded to protect Egyptian creditors against the dangers of bad administration, has remained to be an obstacle to any improvements that must benefit these interests. The practical outcome of the system is that, if the Caisse be hostile—and hostile it has often been—no public work like the Nile Reservoir can be carried out without the imposition of extra taxation to the amount of double the annual expenditure required.
Time passed, the need became more pressing, but the prospects of the Reservoir seemed further off than ever. Besides the regulation of her water-supply, Egypt had on her hands the question of the Soudan. From every point of view the reconquest of that province and the upper waters of the Nile was a prime necessity; no one could tell how long the war might last, or how great the expense might be. It seemed impossible that she could bear the cost of two such enterprises simultaneously, and under such circumstances her credit would not have been sufficient to raise the capital sum required on anything like reasonable terms. Not only so, but by the peculiar constitution of Egyptian finance it was illegal for her to raise a loan without the consent of the Caisse, a consent which it was impossible to obtain.
But, fortunately for Egypt, there were a few men with clearer vision and more faith in the future, and chief among these was Lord Cromer. The statesman who had controlled the tangled destinies of Egypt through so many dark years, and baffled so many tortuous intriguers, as well as more open foes, was not the man to despair in such a situation. In 1897 the first negotiations were quietly opened with Sir E. Cassel. Then came the vote of the majority of the Caisse to grant £500,000 towards the Soudan Railway, and the successful action taken in the Courts against that vote. Everyone knows how this seeming defeat was turned to overwhelming victory by the decision of the English Government to grant £750,000 for the railway on certain conditions. The enemies of England in Egypt received a staggering blow.
But the story was not yet complete. In April, 1898, Sir E. Cassel arrived at Cairo; in one day the details of the arrangements to finance the Dam were settled; all that night the lawyers drafted the necessary documents; a Council of Ministers was hastily called in the morning, and the contracts were signed. Sir E. Cassel was to provide the necessary funds for the execution of the work, £2,000,000; repayment by the Egyptian Government was to be deferred altogether for five years, and then to be spread over a period of thirty years. The first payment of about £78,000 is included in the Budget for 1903.
Looking back now after five years of prosperity, when Egyptian securities have actually increased in value, while Consols themselves have so greatly declined, it is easy to see that the statesman and the financier were justified in their faith. But in those days it needed a clear vision and a stout heart to calculate thirty years ahead—nay, even five—in a country so much the sport of international politics. The Soudan Campaign was not yet ended; behind the dervishes there loomed vague possibilities of worse complications. The Egyptian Government made a good bargain then, though it would doubtless make a better now. But it was then, and not now, that the business had to be settled.
CHAPTER VIII
THE DAM AND THE NEW BARRAGES
Once the financial difficulty was settled, no time was lost in setting to work. As soon as the flood of 1898 began to subside, Messrs. Aird and Co., the contractors, were busy with the foundations of the Dam. Five years was the period allowed by the contract, but a succession of low Niles gave unusual facilities for the work, and everything was completed before the flood of 1902, a year before the specified time.
From its vast proportions, the Dam is infinitely more impressive to the imagination than any other of the irrigation works in Egypt. But from an engineering point of view its construction was a plain, straightforward business compared with the difficulties of building a Barrage, where the river-bed offered no more solid foundation than shifting sands. Still, there was a moment, on the first uncovering of the river-bed, when its fate seemed to hang in the balance. The Assouan site had been selected principally because the outcrop of granite, there running clean across the valley, would give, it was thought, solid foundation at a convenient level. It was found that in some places the rock was rotten to a depth of 40 feet. It was an anxious moment, both from an engineering and a financial point of view. Every foot of rotten rock meant a considerable addition to the calculated expense, besides modifying the building plan. Once more Lord Cromer’s strong will saved the situation. On the financial side he stood on firm ground, and he proved as good an engineer as he had been a financier. Solid rock was reached, and the work went steadily forward. Ten thousand men was the usual sum of those employed, and of these 800 were Italian stone-cutters specially brought over to deal with the tough granite of which the Dam is built. Granite and Portland cement are the two great materials used for welding the fetters of the Nile.
The Dam is about one mile and a quarter in length, and at its deepest point it is 126 feet high. Sixty-five feet of water can be held up when the reservoir is full, and it is capable of storing about 1,200,000,000 cubic metres of water—that is to say, about the same amount of water as passes through Assouan in a single day when the flood is at its height. The face of the wall is a slope on the downstream side, and its width at the bottom corresponds approximately to its height. Seven hundred and eighty thousand cubic yards of masonry have been used. On the western side a ladder of four locks gives passage to boat and steamer traffic at all seasons.