sea, and at low water 90 days: From Lake Victoria to Lake Albert 8 days, Lake Albert to Lâdô 5 days, Lâdô to Khartum 20 days, Khartûm to Aswân 10 days, Aswân to Cairo 5 days, Cairo to the sea 2 days; at low water the times are 8, 5, 36, 26, 12 and 3 days respectively.

The width of the Nile valley varies from 4 to 10 miles in Nubia, and from 15 to 30 in Egypt. The width of the strip of cultivated land on each bank in Nubia is sometimes only a few feet, and even in Egypt proper, when taken together, it is never more than 8 or 9 miles. The Delta is, in its widest part, about 90 miles across from east to west, and the distance of the apex from the sea is also 90 miles. The Nile drains an area of 3,110,000 square kilometres.

The inundation is caused by the rains which fall in the country round about Lake Victoria and in the Abyssinian mountains; in the former the rainy season lasts from February to November, with one maximum in April and another in October, and in the latter there are light rains in January and February, and heavy rains from the middle of April to September, with a maximum in August. In April the heavy rains near Lâdô force down. the green water of the swamps, and about April 15 the Nile has begun to rise at this place; this rise is felt at Khartûm about May 20, and at Aswân about June 10, and the green water announcing this rise is seen at Cairo about June 20. About June 5 the Blue Nile begins to rise quickly, and it reaches its ordinary maximum by August 25; its red, muddy water reaches Aswân about July 15, and Cairo 10 days later. When once the red water has appeared the rise of the Nile is rapid, for the Atbara is in flood shortly after the Blue Nile; the Atbara flood begins early in July. and is at its highest about August 20. The Nile continues to rise until the middle of September, when it remains stationary for a period of about three weeks, sometimes a little less. In October it rises again, and attains its highest

M

level. From this period it begins to subside, and, though it rises yet once more, and reaches occasionally its former highest point, it sinks steadily until the month of June, when it is again at its lowest level. Thus it is clear that the Sobat, Blue Nile, and Atbara rivers supply the waters of the inundation, and that the White Nile supplies Egypt for the rest of the year. The ordinary maximum discharge of the Nile at Aswan is 10,000 cubic metres per second, and the ordinary minimum discharge 410 cubic metres per second; the ordinary maximum discharge at Cairo is 7,600 cubic metres per second, and the ordinary minimum discharge 380 cubic metres per second.

The irrigation of Egypt is gauged by the height of the river at Aswan. When the maximum rise of the river is only 21 feet there will be famine in parts of Upper Egypt: when the rise is between 21 and 23 feet much of the land of Upper Egypt will be imperfectly watered; when the rise is between 23 feet 6 inches and 25 feet certain lands will only be watered with difficulty; when the rise is between 25 feet and 26 feet 6 inches the whole country can be watered; when the rise is between 26 feet 6 inches and 28 feet the country will be flooded; and any rise beyond the last figure will spell misery and the ruin of many. The slope of water surface of the Nile is in summer 1906, and in flood 1200; the cubic contents of the trough of the Nile between Aswan and Cairo are 7,000,000,000 cubic metres; direct irrigation between these places takes 50 cubic metres per second, evaporation 130, and absorption 4co. The amount of water discharged by the Nile into the sea is 65,000,000,000 cubic metres per annum, and in an average year the amount of solid matter carried by the Nile to the sea is 36,600,000 tons. The above facts and figures will probably need some modification as the result of the construction of the Aswan Dam, and also in the light of Sir William Garstin's Report, published in August, 1904.

The dykes, or embankments, which kept the waters of the Nile in check, and regulated their distribution over the lands, were in Pharaonic days maintained in a state of efficiency by public funds, and, in the time of the Romans, any person found destroying a dyke was either condemned to hard labour in the public works or mines, or to be branded and sent to one of the Oases. If we accept the statements of Strabo, we may believe that the ancient system of irrigation was so perfect that the varying height of the inundation caused but little inconvenience to the inhabitants of Egypt, as far as the results of agricultural labours were concerned, though an unusually high Nile would of course wash away whole villages and drown much cattle. If the statements made by ancient writers be compared with facts ascertained in modern times, it will be seen that the actual height of the inundation is the same now as it always was, and that it maintains the same proportion to the land it irrigates. From what has been said above it will be evident that the Nile is the chief physical characteristic of Egypt, and as such it has excited. the surprise, wonder, admiration, and reverence of countless generations of men. Without it Egypt would have been a desert, and uninhabitable to any but nomad tribes; it has always formed the water supply of the whole country, and the existence of men and animals has depended entirely upon the existence of the river in all ages. The Nile was and is the highway of Egypt, and to it the Egyptians have always owed their wealth and prosperity, and their importance as owners of a great corn-producing country among the peoples of the ancient world. In the earliest times the rulers of Egypt gave their deepest attention to the irrigation of the country, and no efforts were spared to obtain the best agricultural results by means of canals and embankments. It seems that each village or city or district was responsible for the maintenance of its river banks in good order, but details as to the way in which the work was carried out are wanting.

Under despotic rulers the banks must always have been maintained by forced labour, and the cutting and cleaning of the canals and reservoirs were, of course, carried out by the same means. So long as everyone was made to take a share in such labour the hardship was not great, for all were interested in the irrigation of the country, but it will be readily seen that under a despotic government or a corrupt administration certain individuals would be exempted from the performance of such labour at the expense of the other members of the community. Also, forced labour gangs would, by bribing the officials, be made to do work which ought to be done at the expense of private individuals, and members of such gangs who had no friends or influence among the official classes would be kept at forced labour practically the whole year round. Whatever may have happened in early times, this was certainly the case in Egypt until the British began to gain power, and all the work done in connexion with the cleaning of canals, and the protecting of the banks during the inundation, and the strengthening of the dykes, was done by forced labour or corvée. Said Pâsha used the corvée in making the Suez Canal, and Ismâ'il Pâsha boldly used it in digging a canal in Upper Egypt, the chief object of which was to water his own private estates. The high officials exempted their own tenants and co-religionists from the corvée, and made the wretched fellaḥin do the work for them. The corvée had to work for nine months of the year, and they had to provide spades, and baskets, and food; their place of abode was changed almost daily, and they had to sleep on the ground. During the inundation they had to live on the river bank, and to provide the materials for the protection of the bank on each side of the Nile. Every male between 15 and 50 years of age was liable to serve in the corvée, and each quarter of the male population was expected to serve for 45 days during the

summer. In 1881 nearly one-half of the men who were liable had succeeded in freeing themselves from their duty.

In a decree dated January 25, 1881 (see the text in Willcocks, op. cit., p. 402), the terms on which certain privileged classes could redeem their tenants from the corvée are set forth, but as no penalties were laid down for those who neither sent men nor paid the redemption tax, every man of any position freed himself from the liability, and the whole of the forced labour fell on the poorer classes. In 1885 Sir Evelyn Baring (Lord Cromer) approved of an advance of £30,000, with the view of trying to substitute hand labour by contract for the corvée, and the experiment was a success. A year later, a quarter of a million was granted towards the relief of the corvée, and for the first time in Egyptian history, the State paid towards the upkeep of the canals and river banks of the country. The total relief of the earthwork maintenance corvée costs the State £420,000 a year.

In December, 1889, the corvée was abolished as far as the clearance of canals and repairs of banks was concerned, and the Public Works Department undertook to do all the repairs; but the corvée for the protection of the Nile banks during the inundation could not be abolished, and a certain number of men have to be called out each year. In 1899 the Nile was abnormally low, and it in many respects resembled that of 1888; in 1899, however, only 10,079 were called out per 100 days (which is one of the lowest numbers on record), while in 1888 the number was 58,788 men per 100 days (Cromer, Report, Egypt No. 1 (1900), p. 19). The abolition of the earthworks corvée is due entirely to the exertions of Lord Cromer and the officials of the Irrigation Department, who have toiled unceasingly for years to remove an infamous burden from the shoulders of the men who were the least able to bear it.

Sir Samuel Baker (Albert Nyanza, vol. ii., p. 331) and