ared a scheme for reserving a vast storage of water in Upper
Egypt at Aswan. It was also decided to follow up the enterprise with
another to be undertaken at Assiut.

On February 20,1898, the khedive approved of a contract with Messrs.
John Aird and Company, which settled the much-debated question of the
Nile reservoir and the scheme for the great dam at Aswan. The government
was able to start the undertaking without any preliminary outlay. It was
agreed that the company should receive the sum of $800,000 a year for
a period of thirty years. Aswan, six hundred miles south of Cairo, was
selected as an advantageous site because the Nile at that place flows
over a granite bed, and is shut in on either side by granite rocks,
which, when the course of the river is barred, would form the shores of
the artificial irrigation lake.

Before this work started, there had been a long controversy as to the
effect produced by the rising waters upon the renowned temple on the
Isle of Philae. Lord Leighton, the president of the Royal Academy, had
vigorously protested against allowing the destruction of this famous
ancient ruin. In the modification of the plans caused by this protest,
it was hoped that no serious harm would result to this well-preserved
relic of ancient Egyptian religion and art.

[Illustration: 269.jpg APPROACH TO PHILAE]

The enterprise was put through with great rapidity, the project
fully realising the designs of its inaugurators. By aid of this great
structure, 2,500 square miles have been added to the area of the 10,500
miles hitherto subject to cultivation. Its value to the country is at
the least worth $100,000,000. The dam extends for one and a quarter
miles, and possesses 180 openings, each of which is twenty-three feet
high, and will altogether allow the outpour of fifteen thousand tons of
water per second. Navigation up and down the Nile has not been impeded,
since, by a chain of four locks, vessels are able to pass up and down
the river. Each lock is 260 feet long and thirty-two feet wide. During
flood-time the gates of the dam are open; while the flood is subsiding
the gates are gradually closed, and thus, in a long season of low water,
the reservoir is gradually filled up for use through a system of canals,
whereby the waters can be drawn off for irrigation and the main flow of
the Nile can be increased. The lake thus formed is nearly three times
the superficial area of Lake Geneva in Switzerland, and t