j W&iaV Z? A 1 Jgr W X lU The Soudan, -where the English hero Gordon waited in vain the relief that Mr. Gladstone never sent an error, by the way. that caused Mr. Gladstone to change from1 prime minister of the Brit ish Empire to a retired country gentle man in the neighborhood of Folkestone. Suffolk is about to undergo a trans formation from barren, shifting sands, more treacherous and less hospitable than the waves of the NoVth Sea. to a veritable garden. A succession of hir vests and pleasant reaches of cultivated fields will greet the traveler along that railway which Jvitchener pushed from the junction of the Blue and the White Xiles, straight a.cross the sands to Khar toum, and there avenged the death of Gordon. In the Soudan, when it i-ains, the stolid Mohammedans fall on their knees a pray. Such events are told and' retold from one generation to an . other. In other words, scientists calcu late that it rains in the Soudan proper about once in every 100 years. ' The transformation of the Soudan from an arid, sand-blasted desert to one of the most fertile countries of the world. It is expected, will require five years of hard labor, about 550.000,000. and a force of some 300 European engineers and overseers, and probably from 20,000 to 40.000 fellaheen. The tremendous change In the prosperity of Egypt is ow ing to the, marvelous engineering which ; has enabled the British to dam the Nile In several .places and by the construction, of regulators to make it possible for the Valley of the Nile to secure a regu-. lar and certain irrigation. This means c that the famines which enabled Joseph to gain the favor of the Pharaoh by his true Jewish forethought and commercial ability are now a thing of the past In Eypt. The lean and fat kine have been replaced in modern Egypt, under the sagacious ruling of Lord Qromer,' who, in the name of the Khedive, rules Egypt and keeps in his embroidered pocket the great key to the Suez approach to India by a constant succession of well-fattened beeves. More than that, without vexatious taxation, the Egyptian fellah has been able to pay more than "the in terest of the bonds and stocks issued to ecure the funds of the irrigation in eypt proper. But the Soudan, which Is separate from Egypt by the lofty cliffs of the Nile Mountains, and which is really a trong deDression which leads up to. the slightly higher desert of the Sahara, presents a problem' in' irrigation far rnore difficult. Nevertheless, the engi neers, who for years have been studying the possibilities of the Blue Nile in con-, nection with irrigating the Soudan, have solved the question. Sir William Gar etin. who is at the head of the depart-" trient of irrigation in Egypt under Lord Cromer, after studying the reports made to him by Engineers C. E. Dupuis and P. M. Tottenham, has grouped the vari ous engineering and scientific problems in connection with irrigating the Sou dan under the following heads: Open dam near Wad Medani. on the. Blue Nile. Dam and storage reservoir near Ro a Ires', on the Blue Nile. River Gash irrigation Dam and storage reservoir near Xhasm-el-Girba. on theAtbara River. ' Storage reservoirs on the Dinder and 2 a had Rivers. ' Storage reservoirs on the - Upper At bara. "WHERE THE WATER COMES FROM. The water, which it is proposed to tore and gradually let . drivel down during the dry season in the bea of the Blue Nile, actually descends from the heavens over a large section of Abys sinia. As a result the British fertiliza tion of the Soudan practically and.po-t Jitlcally depends upon the content of fclmperor Menelik,the most potent bar baric and altogether crafty ruler of Abyssinia. Menelik withheld his con sent for sometime. In the fir.st place, ' the Soudan was the natural and provi dential guarantee against his future ab sorption into the maw of the British l;on. With a cultivated and consequent ly populous and more or less civilized Eoudan, Abyssinia would occupy the Jiow historical and traditional post in JSrMsh diplomacy of being the next nat- -QOeOOT Ural and inevitable addition to the Brit ish Empire. However, Menelik ha been worked on and bribed and liet to so thoroughly and so skilfully tha: his consent has bean given, despite the counter-intriguing of the French For eign Office. The key to the who'.e situa tion is Lake Tsana. ' Lnke Tsaria is. about the size of Lake Ontario and is the largest body of fresh water in North Africa. While not the chief source of the Blue Nile, "which . gushes through the Soudan five months in the year, and is merely a succession cf. shallow puddles the remaining time, it is the only possible- hope of Soudan irrigation. And yet, no,w that it lias been arranged with Abyssinia, the prob lem of irrigating the Soudan is in many wavs an easy one. The"Biue Nile has none of the terrific falls which plagued j the engineers who arranged for the con- ; trol of the real Nile. - ; Vtist Uuatititie of Water' A vnilabl When calculating what the possibili ties of Lake Tsana. as a storage reser voir may be, it will be as well to note nat the natural discharges - or uie Birvj Nite are and what suppiemenung -theyVwm require at certain seasons. Tho flood discharge varies from 70,000 to 120,000 gallons a second, sufficient for all land within reach. If the Soudan abstracts so considerable, a quantity of the Mood as to affect the levels of the Nile in Egypt materially, this will be a matter of no consequence when . a11 jgy)t - is converted to perennial irriga tion. If it is not so converted, then Pypt must meet the situation by mak ing dams to produce artificially the levels required, as the volume of the flood Will be always mpre than suftl Hont Tn hieh Hoods the reduction of the flood levels will be a relief to Egypt It is therefore, evident that the flood I suPDly is equal to aii u-iiuiiwucuia, since a discharge of 0.000 gallons .a second would lill 1,900,000 acres of basin in 30 days; .though what the possible basin may become is one of those things which is not yet determined. In winter the Blue Nile discharge shrinks from 4,000 to 2,000 gallons a sec ond or -" in'-other words, from 350,000,000 to O 000,000 gallons a day, sufficient for a million acres if the minimum discharge is ued as determining the area, or for 1,500,000 acres if the average discharge Is taken. '. . !. ' . ' In summer the -Blue Nile discharge at Khartoum may be anything between o urm f: linns. a second arid nothing. In l'Xtt it fell to -nothing, fao that without storage of water, summer., crops cannot be grown by irrigation from the Blue sji'e And so comes the1 question of water storage and the consideration of the advantager. offered by Lake Tsana as a reservoir.- . The area of ike Tsana Itself is 3.000 sQuare miles, and its catchment, exclu sive of the lake area, is 11,000 square mils The rainfall is three feet each year "falling almost wholly in the four months of Jun-, July, August and Sep tember. The proportion of the rainfall that reaches the ;akf. is 25 per cent. The outflow from the lake is calculated to be &0,000,000 gallons e- clay ar an average for the year. ...s .frT 11 1 i vtf w : : '. II IWCTJajl CFjrKVVsh7rJ2LE3 Calculating in the same way in the case of the White Nile lakes, we have the follov.ing: Quantity entering the lake. Quantity discharged Quantity evaporated 3C, 480,000,000 From the foregoing oalculations it is evident that the effective reservoir ca pacity of the lake is 30,000,000,000 gallons, and it may fall to iO.tVJ, 000,000 in a year of scanty "rainfall and rise to 50.000,000. ooo in a year of abundant rain. Sir V. Garstin accepts the figures of 30.000,000. 000 as probably obtainable. If, now. this total available volume is concentrated in the outflow of 100 days a regulator, to be built at the outfall, being kept closed for the remainder of the year the discharga obtainable would be J00, 000,000 gallons a diy, sufficient allow ing tor loss on the way for about 2.000, 000 acres of land under perennial irriga tion. But perennially irrigated lands should, for the sake of rotation of crops, have a supply of water available at all seasons. Now the natural winter dis charge of the Blue Nile is, at its lowest, sufficient for 1,000,000 acres only. If then we make allowance for keeping up the Blue Nile discharge in winter to 3,1'UO gallons a second, so as to provide suffi cient for a gross area of 1,500,000 acres, tho quantity available for storage to use during the loo days of summer will be reduced to 20,000 gallons and the gross area of land, under perennial irrigation to about 1,500.000 acres, and this is, ap parently, the maximum that the Soudan can expect from the Blue Nile and Lake Tsana. There may be other reservoir sites besides Lane tsana sun to De dis- covered on the Blue Nile itself or on its tributaries, out u ravoraoio sites are found there is still to be solved the problem of filling them and at the fiaine time of avoiding mud deposit in the res ervoir. WORK ON LAKE TSANA. As regards the work necessary to con vert Lake Tsana into a reservoir to store 30,000,000,000 gallons a regulator should be built on the outflow channel about 15 miles distant from the lake. The regulator would have 40 openings of nine feet eacn, with its floor sunk 12 feet below the high-water level in the lake- it would be capable of passing 300 000,000 gallons a day and would have to 'hold up six feet head of water. The rock bed above and below the regulator would have to be cut down for some distance to form the channels of ap proach and discharge. Were such a reservoir made, a dam near Wad Medani would also be necessary to provide for the distribution of the summer water to the lands lying in the Ghezireh, south of Khartoum, between the White and Blue Niles, and the lands on the right of the BlueNile. One of the great advantages of the system of basin irrigation, which is be ing built now in the Soudan, is that large areas can be cultivated with a very few laborers, and as the Soudan is one'of the most sparsely populated THE MORNING POST: SUNDAY; DECEMBER . II? 1904j W-. W!-'S-Ctk , . Each Year. 0 n S a-l&U2J j i i . . portions' of the eajth,, that will be a big point gained. 'jThe two great systems of irrigation are known as basin and chan nel irrigation. Barsin irrigation is where the water is run off into basins some seven or eight :r.iles apart, and from each basin some 40 or 50 square miles of territory are suppliec. with water, while in the channel irrigation the water sim ply runs down into little ducts or chan nels at the will- of 'the farmers. The basin irrigation is more easily controlled and is under more even distribution, ow ing to its centralized method of handling the water, and in a decidedly lawless territory, such as the Soudon, the basin irrigation is far more practicable. At the same time both these systems can be carried on in the same territory. The basin system is more expensive, but the British engineers consider it the best, for the Soudan for at -least a century to" come. Immediately to the south of Khar toum a large number of basins are now being erected, which should irrigate about l.OOO.Oift) acres on that side of the river, and also feed the Hood channels of 1.000,000 acres which will be embanked and inundated every year in the upper Egypt basin system. These basin lands lie between Wad Medani, Shendy and Berber. The Blue Niie will be relieved of a portion of its labor after it reaches the Maroe Islands, where the Atbara River joins the Blue Nile and relieves somewhat the demand on the main stream of the Soudan. The true agricultural future of the tracts adjoining the Blue Nile does not, however, lie in the direction of summer irrigation, but rather in the development of tliose crops which can be ripened dur ing the summer months. The soil of the Gherizeh and of a large portion of the lands lying to the east of the river much resembles that of parts of Dakota, which produce the finest wheat. The soil of the two countries is very similar, but in the" Soudan one important agent is wanting, viz.: a winter rainfall. With out this, winter crops cannot be raised, except in comparatively small areas ad jacent to the river. Canal or basin irri gation must then be supplied as a sub stitute for the absence of rain in win ter. Were this provided the Province of Sennaar and the southern portion of the Province of Khartoum might become one of the finest wheat-producing areas in the world. Water in Winter Needed. The winter discharge of the Blue Nile falls by the end of January or Feb ruary amounts to 2,000 gallons a second, or about 170,000,000 gallons a day. Sir W. Garstia reckons that "such a discharge would be sufficient for the ir rigation of 800,000 acres of winter crop at the least." Considering that 170,000,000 gallons a day is the discharge at the end of winter waterings in February, and that the discharge is some 40,000.000 a day in December, and some 30,000,000 a day in January, it would be safe to reckon the winter discharge of the Blue Nile sufficient for 1,000,000 acres. No at tempt has been made by Sir W. Gar stin to calculate what use could be made of the flood in filling basins and raising crops by inundation of the land during flood, as is done in Upper Egypt without any winter waterings. To distribute the winter water, dama are being built similar to the great delta dam, with the usual distributing canals and works on both sides of the river. The work will begin with the irrigation of the northern .portion of the Ghezireh and of those tracts on the eastern bank lying to the north of Wad Medani.. Here the country is open and comparatively free from bush and forest. Moreover, from its vicinity to Khartoum and the railway, it wouid appear to lend itself to improvement more than do the re moter areas to the south. This dam is ' being 'constructed, at the point- where the Rahad River joins the Blue Nile, so that tho east bank canal wiJl be car ried down to the north, without having to cross any stream of impdrtance. In facf. the engineers are solving the iden tical problem which faced Ismail Pasna's engineers, who were called upon to provide for the irrigation of the Khedive's sugar-cane estates in Middle Egypt, alongside a chain of basins; a problem they solved without the help of a dam on the river, as the existence of the corvee or unpaid labor system overcame the difficulty of want of ready money to pay lor the large amount of earthwork excavated. They dug the Ibrahimia Canal, with a head open to the river, and at Derut, 40 miles from Assiout, they constructed regu lators to distribute the water between the basin feeders and the perennially flowing canals. The dam and Ibrahimia Canal head at Assiout, lately con structed, completed the scheme which is now serving as a model for the Blue Nile project. Lord Cromer, in a recent interview with the writer, figures out that the iiAirs and locks of the entire Soudan vtem will cost $7,000,COO. while the canals and basins will cost. $30, 000,000. The necessary bond issues for com mencement of the work, amounting to S10 000,000. were all absorbed in London' ird New York about 18 months ago at ft-.-.r-. Tho Intarect is at n q very lt little over 4 per cent., while Lord Cromer ' declares that, managed in the same fashion as the irrigation of Egypt proper, at the end of 10 years the reve nues derived from the Soudan Irrigation should pay a little over 10 per cent, on the investment, thus leaving a clear 6 per cent, to be poured into the sinking funds under Lord Cromer's control. The working out of these irrigation problems in Egypt have been the financial and human salvation of the country. Under Ismail Pasha the financial condition of Egypt could not have been worse. What We Will Do in the West. The American people have a somewhat similar problem for them In the great West, which has already assumed the attitude of a national question, both the recent political platforms having de clared in favor of prompt aid for the arid lands in the West. Humanity In general has become so accustomed to considering that what nature does is best that it is difficult to convince the average American that farming where irrigation is intelligently applied is far more profitable and less, laborious. The arid lands of the West when" properly irrigated will undoubtedly form the gar- - - -' 161 , ! v 4 MF j iiM f - 1 umtWG JuiZiiGniEwn den spot of the . continent. The taxei for the water can be absolutely relied on to be less than the losses from drouth or too heavy rainfall or from frost and hall in territories which t epend on a natural water supply. The first great undertaking in the Ir rigation line In the Soudan problem was, of course, the construction of the fir?t dam, 16 miles south of where the Blue Nile flows out of Lake Tsana. At thin point the Blue Nile is slightly over a mile and a half in width, and just after it leaves the body of the 4ako it has a very heavy fall and for a. greater, por tion of its course a rocky bed. This means that- the engineering difficulty shou-vi not be as severe as in the main Nile, where the great dam had to be constructed on a softer bottom, entail ing deep excavations for a proper bed. Moreover, the sides of the dam near Lake Tsana are formed of strong rock ribbed strata, which saves an immense amount of concrete and granite con struction. The loss of water, therefore, will be comparatively small, leakage be ing almost out of the question, and when the system of locks Is finally con structed in the river bed between R0" saries and Khartoum the canals will carry off the water on either side. Thus a summer irrigation of Ghezireh and of the eastern provinces will be easily and simply effected. Supplementary storage reservoirs will be built wherever the small rivers of the Soudan flow into the Blue Nile. The Atbara situation has already been explained, and similar reservoirs are being built for the Dmder and Rahad Rivers. TO EE COMPLETE BY 1910. By 1P10, then, at the latest, the fields of the Soudan should be green with mil let and corn, while the most important crop is expected to prove the fine Egyp tian cotton, which excels the American product, and may yet make E:ypt ona of the wealthiest countries in the world. France now realizos more bitterly than ever the Importance of the Fashoda In cident. Driven back from the upper end of the Soudan, too wise to attempt to coerce Abyssinia where Menelik dashed the hopes and slaughtered .the soldiers of Italy, France may now definitely see the restriction of her African Influence to that almost worthless strip of land edging the Southern Mediterranean coast. With an irrigated Soudan one finds inevitably an irritated France, but while France may prove irritable, ha will hardly prove intractable. The spending of what will total $51. 000,000 in forcing the waters of Lake. Tsana to hold their dashing forces and to gently ripple as the need arises over the sands of the Soudan is undoubtedly a political" triumph for Great Britain, yet to the world at large and the Sou danese in particular the constant en croachment Cf Great Brjtain. howevar prompted by a selfish absorption of ter ritory, can only prove an unalloyed blessing. The triumph of the Eriton in Africa is merely a case of the survival of the fittest. A study of British meth ods in Egypt Is now alceady being made by several of our finest engineers, under the direction of the State Department at Washington. In British hands the spade and plough share inevitably succeed the sabre and the rifle. Tho picture of the undaunted and abandoned Gordon holding his mud walled citadel in Khartoum in 1SS0, dying finally upon the savage speara of the Mullah's Arab horsemen, is slowly but surely fading to give place to a Sou danese landscape of rose gardens and" fields ripe for the harvest, certainty the fairy tales of the future will be those created by that modern magician the engineer; those engineers who now bold ly attack a continent and change th face of nature as moulded thousand i of years ago 1 -rf 4 i

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