own in the opening which
the water had made. At last two large railway waggons were filled with
stones in wire cages, securely tied into the waggons with steel ropes.
These, weighing altogether fifty tons, were pushed along a pair of rails
on the top of the 'sudd' (or thick growth of weeds and flotsam) till
they fell with a tremendous splash into the opening. Then the Nile was
beaten. It could not move such a weight, and the masons worked on in
peace--three hundred and fifty-three of them, night and day.
Fortunately, too, the builders were encouraged by telegraphic reports
received from stations farther up the river to the effect that the
waters showed no signs of rising. The flood, in fact, proved unusually
late that year, and by the time it came, the dam at Assuan was raised
sufficiently high to be independent of the temporary 'sudds.' For three
months work was suspended while the water roared through and over the
stonework, but at the end of that time work progressed more rapidly than
ever.

So cleverly had matters been arranged that no delay was caused by having
to wait for materials. The granite was quarried in the neighbourhood,
but was no more prompt in arriving at the scene of action than the coal
and cement that came all the way from England. During the time of
construction no less than twenty-eight thousand tons of coal were burned
in the engine fires; and seventy-five thousand tons of cement were mixed
to bind the granite blocks together, or to be formed into smooth slabs
for facing the sluice-ways. In the long wall thus erected, which is
seventy feet high in places (the bed of the river being so uneven) there
are one hundred and eighty gateways or sluices, each nearly seven feet
wide and twenty-three feet deep--except a few which are just half that
depth. These openings are arranged on different levels, the bottom row
being sixty feet below the surface of the water when the reservoir is
full. They are all contained in a length of four thousand six hundred
feet, the rest (one thousand eight hundred feet) of the dam being solid
masonry. The sluice-ways are closed by iron gates which work vertically
in grooves of steel, and can be raised or lowered from the top of the
dam--a roadway sixteen feet wide. That these huge iron curtains may be
lifted more easily, one hundred and thirty of them are fitted with
rollers, and whatever the pressure of water, they rise and fall with
great smoothness.

Five years were al