in Upper Egypt; the moneys so collected were to be devoted to the reduction or suppression of forced labour. As a result of this enactment every man who could raise 25s. freed himself, and the whole of the corvée fell on the poorest classes; in fact, no man who owned more than five acres went to the corvée. In 1885 the Egyptian Government spent £30,000 on clearing canals by contract instead of by forced labour, and dredging was recommended for the larger canals; and in 1886 £250,000 were spent in the relief of the corvée, and thus, probably for the first time in history, the Egyptian Government contributed to the maintenance of the canals and river banks. In 1889 the corvée was abolished, and it was decreed that in 1890 no forced labour was to be used for the clearance of canals and repairs of banks; the Public Works Department undertook to do the whole of the earthwork repairs for the sum of £400.000. It must, however, be understood that the obligation of guarding the river banks during the inundation still devolved upon the people, and that it was, and still is, necessary to call out a number of men each year to do this. The number of men called out to guard the banks of the Nile during the flood season was 36.782 (for 100 days) in 1895, 14,180 (for 100 days) in 1900, and 19,201 (for 100 days) in 1910. Lord Cromer thought that the present system did not "entail any very serious hardship on the population. At the same time, it is unquestionably true that the employment of forced labour for any purpose whatsoever is open to objection. Now that other more pressing matters have been disposed of, it is worthy of consideration whether the time has not come to abolish the last vestige of a bad system." This was written in 1900. Mr. Verschoyle, Inspector-General of Irrigation for Lower Egypt, thought (1904) that the policy of reducing flood watchmen in the Delta had been rather overdone during the last few years, and he reported that the banks, which had been deprived of their protection of stakes and brushwood, had suffered from water action. Under the rule of the British in Egypt the men who are required for the protection of the river banks are chosen with due regard to justice, and the slight burden which falls upon the people is carefully adjusted, every care being taken to prevent the creeping in of any abuse, and the men called out recognize the justice of the call. If the abolition of the corvée for the clearance of the canals were the only benefit which had been conferred by the British upon the Egyptians, it alone would be sufficient to make the British Occupation of Egypt for ever remarkable. V. THE BARRAGES ON THE NILE. In connection with the foregoing article on the Nile it is necessary to add here a few particulars concerning the great engineering works which have been carried out for the purpose of storing the waters of the river, and distributing them systematically according to the needs and wants of the various districts at different seasons of the year. The three greatest and most important of these are:-(1) The Barrages to the north of Cairo; (2) the Barrage at Asyût; (3) the Barrage at Asnâ; (4) the Dam at Aswân. 1. The Barrages North of Cairo. We have seen above that one of the Pharaohs marked the heights to which the Nile rose at Samnah, and we know that on the front of the stone quay at Thebes Shashanq I and his successors also recorded the heights of the Nile floods in various years; but, so far as we know, no attempt was ever made by the ancient Egyptians to build a dam or barrage across the main stream, or to regulate the supply of its waters on any large scale. Yet the idea of a dam must have occurred to many of the great engineers of the Pharaohs, and the only wonder is that Amenemhat III, who did so much for the irrigation of Egypt, omitted to take in hand such an obvious work of improvement. According to Major Sir R. H. Brown, R.E. (History of the Barrage, Cairo, 1896), Clot Bey has put it on record that Napoleon Bonaparte prophesied that the day would come when barrages would be thrown across the Rosetta and Damietta arms of the Nile, and that these, by means of coffer dams, would allow the whole of the Nile stream to flow into either branch, and in this manner the inundation would be doubled. Soon after Muhammad 'Ali became Viceroy of Egypt he began to develop cotton growing, and he found that the basin system of irrigation, which was then in operation, was unsuitable for his purpose. In 1833 he decided that it was necessary to increase the water in the Damietta branch, and in order to effect this he proposed to dam the waters of the Rosetta branch, which supplied Alexandria and a whole province with water, and turn them into the Damietta branch. The Viceroy abandoned his scheme on the suggestion of Linant de Bellefonds Bey, and agreed to his proposal to throw a barrage across the head of each branch of the Nile; and such was the Viceroy's haste to have the work completed that he ordered the Pyramids to be pulled down, and the stones of which they are built to be used in constructing the new work. With consummate tact Linant Bey proved that it would cost less to bring the stone from a quarry than from the Pyramids, and thus the Pyramids were spared. In 1833 Linant's Barrage was begun by the corvée, and work went on until 1835, when the cholera raged, and the buildings came to a standstill; in 1837 Linant was made Director of the Public Works Department, and, in brief, his barrage was never finished. It is said that the Viceroy regarded the cholera of 1835 as a sign that the Almighty was displeased with his attempt to interfere with the arrangements of the Nile which Nature had made. In 1842 Mougel Bey proposed to the Viceroy a barrage which could be combined with a fortress, and in 1843 he laid his plans before the Council of Roads and Bridges; the Rosetta Barrage was to have 39 arches, and the Damietta 45, each being 8 metres wide. The Damietta portion was begun in that same year, and the Rosetta portion in 1847; and Muhammad 'Ali was so impatient that he ordered 1,000 cubic metres of concrete to be laid daily, whether it had time to "set or not! Mougel, the engineer, endeavoured to carry out the Viceroy's orders, even though his knowledge told him that it was bad for the work, and the result was, inasmuch as the river was 3 feet higher that year than it was the year before, that part of the concrete was laid in running water. The current carried away the lime from it; the remainder, of course, would not set, and the underground springs, forcing their way up, destroyed the last chance of the success of the work. Mougel wished to postpone the work for a year, but the Viceroy would not permit it, and so the building went on; in 1848 Muḥammad ‘Ali died, without seeing the barrage completed, and in 1853, as the result of an unfavourable report, 'Abbâs Pâshâ, the new Viceroy, dismissed Mougel, and told him to hand over his plans to Mazhar Bey. At that time, although 47,000,000 francs had been spent on the barrage, without mentioning the labour of the corvée and of soldiers, scarcely any of the piers were above the level of the water. The total cost of the barrage, with its fortifications, canal heads, etc., was about £4,000,000. In 1861 and 1863 Commissions were appointed to inquire into the barrage question, and in the latter year, because water was urgently wanted, the barrage gates were closed with the view of holding up about 4 feet of water; as a result, cracks appeared in the structure. In 1867 a section of 10 openings of the Rosetta Barrage separated itself from the rest of the work, and moved downstream. In 1871 Linant Bey reported that it would take five years' work and an expenditure of 25,000,000 francs to make the barrage safe. In 1876 Sir John Fowler examined the barrage, and proposed to remedy its defects for the sum of £1,200,000; but as Isma'îl Pâsha had no faith in the barrage, nothing came of the matter. In the same year General J. H. Rundall, R.E., made a report on the barrage, and he estimated that repairs would cost £400,000, and the "training of the river" and new gates another £100,000. "The manner of restoring the barrage, as recommended by General Rundall, is very nearly that which was actually adopted; and, further, the cost of the restoration was correctly estimated" (Major Brown, Barrage, p. 24). He was In 1883 Rousseau Pâshâ, Director of Public Works, declared the only use of the barrage was to distribute the river discharge between the two branches, and that to make it fit even for this work would cost £400,000. in favour of pumps, and had recently signed a contract, which was to last until 1915, with a company who undertook to supply water to the Western Delta for £50,000 a year, and it was solemnly proposed to extend the system, and to irrigate Lower Egypt by pumps at an initial cost of £700,000, and an annual outlay of £248,550. The English authorities declined to adopt this proposal, and directed Mr. (now Sir) W. Willcocks to examine the barrage and to report upon it. In 1884 this eminent expert was permitted to spend £25,611 in providing the Damietta Barrage with gates and in general repairs. In June 1884, he was able to hold up water to a depth of 7 feet 2 inches in the Rosetta Barrage, and to a depth of 3 feet in the Damietta Barrage. The cotton crop that year was 3,630,000 kanțârs, as against 3,186,060 kanțârs in 1879, which was the greatest known crop before 1884. In 1885 about £18,246 were spent on the barrage, and the results were so successful that it was decided to restore the whole work; the total sum spent in restoring both barrages was £465,000, and the work lasted from 1886 to 1891. When finished the barrage was able to hold up a head of about |