Egypt.

Nile Valley will be spun and woven in Egyptian mills by Egyptian labor.

English financiers have the strongest faith in the future of Egypt. For centuries Egypt Finances of was practically a bankrupt country, but within the past few years, under able English administration, the finances of Egypt have been placed on a solid foundation. The best proof of this is found in the daily market quotations of Egyptian Government securities. The one man who may be well called the Financier of Egypt is Sir Ernest Cassel.

The finan cier of the dam.

England in control.

Sir Ernest Cassel's greatest work in Egypt has been the financing of the new dam. For years Egyptian engineers have gone up and down the Nile Valley projecting on paper wonderful schemes of irrigation. Lakes have been formed, canals dug, and great barrages thrown across the river-all on paper. All of these fine schemes, which proposed to turn the desert into a garden, were brought before the Egyptian Government, and the rulers applauded the engineers. But, when it came to providing funds for the carrying out of these plans for the saving of Egypt, the government was silent. Although Egypt is now on a sound financial footing, its financial arrangements are most chaotic. Nominally the vassal state of the Sultan of Turkey, the independence of Egypt is guaranteed by the Powers; but the financial administration is practically controlled by England. When Sir

Benjamin Baker, the distinguished English engineer of the Forth Bridge and the Central London Railway, placed before the Egyptian Government an engineering plan for the damming of the Nile at two points-six hundred, and two hundred and fifty miles, respectively -above Cairo, the government gave its approval to the scheme, which involved the expenditure of several million sterling. But the government was not able to pay for the work, except by small payments extending over a long period of years, and not beginning until the dams were in actual operation.

Cassel's

Undaunted, Sir Benjamin Baker went to sir E. his friend, Sir Ernest Cassel, and told him enterprise. that several million sterling was needed to dam the Nile, and would he advance it? The engineer assured the banker that the project would be of inestimable benefit to Egypt, and that the two dams would rapidly pay for themselves in the greatly increased revenue they would bring to the Egyptian Government in water taxes. long to decide.

It did not take the banker

Four days later a contract had been signed with Sir John Aird, who is probably the greatest contractor in England to-day, to build the two dams within five years. Sir Ernest Cassel agreed to pay the contractor for the work as it was carried on, and an agreement was made with the Egyptian Government, by which payment for the work will be made to Sir Ernest Cassel in an

5-Vol. 8

The wonderful dam.

Engineer.

ing diffi

annuity of £160,000 a year, the first payment to be made in July, 1903. That the Egyptian Government will not only be able to pay the annuity, but will profit immensely by the new dams, is more than assured by the fact that the barrage at Assiout, already in operation, is now earning enough to pay the entire annuity.

The dam at Assouan is a dam such as was never projected before. To build a great wall across an ordinary stream is merely a matter of labor, but to throw up a dam in the heart of a Nile cataract is a daring engineering undertaking.

"We had no idea of the difficulties we were culties. to meet," said Sir Benjamin Baker to the writer, in describing the work at Assouan. "We were greatly hampered in the work at the beginning because of the uncertainties of the river bed. We had to crush one turbulent channel after another, to enable our thousands of workmen to go down into the bed of the river to excavate for the foundation. This work had to be done at High Nile to enable us to begin excavating as soon as the Nile subsided. In closing a channel, we first threw ton after ton of granite blocks into the cataract, and then we pitched in trainloads of Rubble and rock, trucks and all. Gradually the rubble mound rose above the surface of the water. After the flood had subsided we banked this rock wall with many thousand bags of sand.

sand.