The Koptic community supports one thousand schools for elementary education, twenty-seven primary boys' and girls' schools, and one college. The teaching of the Koptic language in the schools is now compulsory; the subjects taught, and the methods of teaching them, are the same as in vogue in other countries. Fifty per cent, of the Koptic male population can read and write well. The indigenous tribunals of the country are called Mehkemmehs, and are presided over by cadis. At the present time they retain jurisdiction in matters of personal law relating to marriage succession, guardianship, etc. Beyond this sphere they also fulfil certain functions connected with the registration of title of land. In matters of personal law, however, the native Christians are subject to their own patriarchs or other religious leaders.

In other matters, natives are justiciable before the so-called native tribunals, established during the period of the British occupation. These consist of forty-six summary tribunals, each presided over by a single judge, who is empowered to exercise jurisdiction in matters up to $500 in value, and criminal jurisdiction in offences punishable by fine or by imprisonment of three years or less. Associated with these are seven central tribunals, each chamber consisting of three judges. There is also a court of appeal in Cairo, one-half of its members being Europeans. In criminal matters there is always a right to appeal, sometimes to the court of appeal, sometimes to a central tribunal. In civil matters an appeal lies from a summary tribunal to a central tribunal in matters exceeding $500 in value, and from the judgment of a central tribunal in the first instance to the court of appeal in all cases. The prosecution in criminal matters is entrusted to the parquet, which is directed by a procurer-general; the investigation of crime is ordinarily conducted by the parquet, or by the police under its direction. Offences against irrigation laws, which were once of such frequent occurrence and the occasion of injustice and lawlessness, are now tried by special and summary administration tribunals.

The capitulations or agreements concerning justice entered into by all the Great Powers of Europe and the Ottoman Empire, relative to the trial and judgment of Europeans, include Egypt as an integral part of the Turkish Empire. Foreigners for this reason have the privilege of being tried by European courts. But if one party in a case is European and another Egyptian, there are special mixed tribunals, established in 1876, consisting partly of native and partly of foreign judges. These tribunals settle civil and also some criminal cases between Egyptians and Europeans, and in 1900 penal jurisdiction was conferred upon them in connection with offences against the bankruptcy laws.

There are three mixed tribunals of the first class, with a court of appeal, sitting at Alexandria. Civil cases between foreigners of the same nationality are tried before their own consular courts, which also try criminal cases not within the jurisdiction of the mixed tribunals, in which the accused are foreigners. By this well organised administration of justice, crime has steadily decreased throughout Egypt, and the people have learned to enjoy the benefit of receiving impartial justice, from which they had been shut off for many centuries.

About sixty per cent, of the inhabitants of modern Egypt belong to the agricultural class—the fellaheen. The peasantry are primitive and thrifty in their habits, and hold tenaciously to their ancient traditions. They are a healthy race, good-tempered and tractable, and fairly intelligent, but, like all Southern nations breathing a balmy atmosphere, they are unprogressive. Centuries of oppression have not, however, crushed their cheerfulness. There is none of that abject misery of poverty among the Egyptians which is to be seen in cold countries. There is no starvation amongst them. Food is cheap, and a peasant can live well on a piastre (five cents) a day. A single cotton garment is enough for clothing, and the merest hut affords sufficient protection. The wants of the Egyptians are few. Their condition, now freed from forced labour, called the "Courbash," as also from injustice, crushing taxation, and usury, which characterised former administrations, compares favourably with the peasantry of many countries in Europe, and is equal, if not superior, to that of the peasantry of England itself.

Under the British protection there has been a renewal of the Koptic Christian race. They are easily to be distinguished from their Muhammedan countrymen, being lighter in colour, and resembling the portraits on the ancient monuments. They are a strong community in Upper Egypt, whither they fled from the Arab invaders, and they there hold a large portion of the land. They live mostly in the towns, are better educated than other Egyptians, and are employed frequently in the government service as clerks and accountants.

Koptic is still studied for church purposes by the Kopts, who both by their physiognomy and by their retention of the old Egyptian institution of monasticism are the only true descendants having the social and physical heredity of the ancient Egyptians. Four of the oldest monasteries in the world still survive in the Natron Valley.



In spite of their distinguished social ancestry, the Kopts are by no means a superior class morally to the fellaheen, who are in part the descendants of those ancient Egyptians who renounced the Christian religion, the language and institutions of the Egyptian Christians, and accepted Muhammedanism and the Arabic language and institutions.

The creed of the Kopts is Jacobite. They have three metropolitans and twelve bishops in Egypt, one metropolitan and two bishops in Abyssinia, and one bishop in Khartum. There are also arch-priests, priests, deacons, and monks. Priests must be married before ordination, but celibacy is imposed upon monks and high dignitaries. The Abyssinian Church is ruled by a metropolitan, and bishops are chosen from amongst the Egyptian-Koptic ecclesiastics, nor can the coronation of the King of Abyssinia take place until he has been anointed by the metropolitan, and this only after the authorisation by the Patriarch of Alexandria.



CHAPTER V.—THE WATER WAYS OF EGYPT

The White and Blue Niles: The Barrage: Clearing the Sudd: The Suez Canal: Ancient and modern irrigation: The Dam at Aswan: The modern exploration of the Nile.

Between the Sudan and the Mediterranean the only perennial stream is the Nile, a word probably derived from the Semitic root nahal, meaning a valley or a river-valley, and subsequently a "river," in a pre-eminent and exclusive sense. The ancient Egyptians called it the Ar or Aur (Koptic, Iaro), or "black"; hence the Greek word [...] allusion to the colour, not of the water, but of the sediment which it precipitated during the floods. In contrast to the yellow sands of the surrounding desert, the Nile mud is black enough to have given the land itself its oldest name, Kem, or Kemi, which has the same meaning of "black." At Khartum, where the White Nile joins the Blue Nile, the main branch has a fall from its upper level in the region of the tropical lakes, four thousand feet above the sea, to twelve hundred feet, while traversing a distance of twenty-three hundred miles. From Khartum to the sea the distance through which the waters of the Nile wend their way is about eighteen hundred and forty miles. During the greater part of this course the flow is level, the average descent being about eight inches per mile. If it were not, therefore, for the obstruction met with in the Nubian section, the course of the Nile would be everywhere navigable. Although no perennial affluents enter the main stream lower down than Khartum, the volume of the Nile remains with little diminution throughout the entire distance to the Mediterranean. During the period of low water the amount of water in different localities is still uniform, notwithstanding all the irrigation, infiltration, and evaporation constantly taking place. The only explanation which has been given to this phenomenon is that there are hidden wells in the bed of the Nile, and from their flow the waste is ever renewed.

As the earth revolves from west to east, the waters of the Nile tend to be driven upon the right bank on the west, where the current is constantly eating away the sandstone and limestone cliffs. For this reason the left side of the river is far more fertile and well cultivated than the right bank. Below Ombos the valley is narrowly constructed, being but thirteen hundred yards in width, the cliffs overhanging the river on either side, but at Thebes it broadens out to nine or ten miles, and farther up, in the Keneh district, the valley is twelve or fifteen miles in width. The river here approaches within sixty miles of the Red Sea, and it is believed that a branch of the Nile once flowed out into the sea in this direction.



Seventy miles below Keneh the Nile throws from its left bank the Bahr Yusef branch, a small current of 350 feet in breadth, which flows for hundreds of miles through the broader strip of alluvial land between the main stream and the Libyan escarpments. In the Beni-Suef district this stream again bifurcates, the chief branch continuing to wind along the Nile Valley to a point above the Delta, where it joins the main stream. The left branch penetrates westward through a gap in the Libyan escarpments into the Fayum depression, ramifying into a thousand irrigating rills, and pouring its overflow into the Birket-el-Qarum, or "Lake of Horns," which still floods the lowest cavity and is a remnant of the famous ancient Lake Moris. The Fayum, which is the territory reclaimed from the former lake, is now an exceedingly productive district, a sort of inland delta, fed like the marine delta by the fertilising flood-waters of the Nile.

The traveller Junker wrote of this district in 1875: "I found myself surrounded by a garden tract of unsurpassed fertility, where there was scarcely room for a path amid the exuberant growths; where pedestrians, riders, and animals had to move about along the embankments of countless canals. Now a land of roses, of the vine, olive, sugar-cane, and cotton, where the orange and lemon plants attain the size of our apple-trees, it was in primeval times an arid depression of the stony and sandy Libyan waste."

North of the Fayum the Nile flows on to Cairo, where the narrow water way allowed to its course by the two lines of cliffs widens, and the cliffs recede to the right and left. There is thus space for the waters to spread and ramify over the alluvial plain. Nearly all this portion of Egypt has been covered by the sediment of the Nile, and from the earliest times there have been numerous distinct branches or channels of the river running out by separate openings into the sea. As several of these branches have been tapped to a great extent for irrigation, all except two have ceased to be true outlets of the Nile. In the Greek period there were seven mouths and several [...Greek...], or "false mouths." The two remaining mouths are those of Rosetta and Damietta, and these were always the most important of the number. They branched off formerly close to the present spot where Cairo stands, a little below Memphis; but during two thousand years the fork has gradually shifted to about thirteen miles lower down.

The triangular space enclosed by these two branches and the sea-coast was called by the Greeks the delta, on account of the likeness in shape to the Greek letter of that name A. At the head, or apex, of the triangle stands the famous barrage, or dam, begun in 1847 by Mehemet Ali, for the twofold purpose of reclaiming many thousand acres of waste land, and of regulating the discharge and the navigation through the Delta. The idea was originated by a Frenchman in his service named Linant Bey. This engineer desired to alter the course of the river and build a weir at a point farther to the north, where the contour of land seemed to favour the design more than that of the present locality. Mehemet Ali thought his plans too costly, and accepted in preference those of Mougel Bey. Unexpected difficulties were encountered from the very beginning. Mehemet was exceedingly anxious to hurry the work, and Mougel Bey had only made a beginning, when an exceptionally high Nile carried away all the lime in the concrete base. Mehemet Ali did not live to see the completion of this work. The object, could it have been realised, was to hold up the waters of the Nile during the eight months of the ebb, and thus keep them on a level with the soil, and at the same time to supply Lower Egypt with an amount of water equal to that which came down during flood-time. It was hoped to cover the very large expenditure by the additional land which it was expected would come under irrigation, and by doing away with the primitive shadoofs and setting free for productive enterprise the numerous army of the agricultural labourers who spent the greater part of their time in slowly raising up buckets of water from the Nile and pouring them into the irrigating channels.



The barrage is a double bridge, or weir, the eastern part spanning the Damietta branch of the Nile, the western part the Rosetta branch. The appearance of the structure is so light and graceful that the spectator finds it hard to conceive of the difficulty and the greatness of the work itself. Architecturally, the barrage is very beautiful, with a noble front and a grand effect, produced by a line of castellated turrets, which mark the site of the sluice gates. There are two lofty crenellated towers, corresponding with the towers over the gateway of a mediaeval baronial castle. The sluices are formed of double cones of hollow iron, in a semicircular form, worked on a radii of rods fixed to a central axis at each side of the sluice-gate. They are slowly raised or let down by the labour of two men, the gates being inflected as they descend in the direction of the bed of that part of the river whose waters are retained. The working of the barrage was never what it was intended to be. After the year 1867 it ceased to be of any practical utility, and was merely an impediment to navigation. Between the years 1885—90, however, during the British occupation, Sir Colon Scott-Moncrieff successfully completed the barrage at a cost of $2,500,000, and now the desired depth of eight feet of water on the lower part of the Nile can always be maintained.



It proved to be of the greatest advantage in saving labour worth hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, and in the irrigation and navigation facilities that had been contemplated as among the benefits which would naturally accrue from its successful completion.

Compared with the advance of the land seaward at the estuary of the Mississippi and the Ganges, the advance of the Nile seaward is very slow. This is accounted for by the geological theory that the Delta of the Nile is gradually sinking. If this is so, the tendency of the periodical deposit to raise the level of the Delta will be counteracted by the annual subsidence. These phenomena account for the gradual burial of Egyptian monuments under the sand, although the actual level of the sea above what it formerly was is quite unappreciable.

The periodical rise in the Nile, recurring as regularly as the revolutions of the heavenly bodies, necessarily remained an unsolved mystery to the ancients, for until the discovery of the tropical regions, with their mountainous lakes and deluging rains, it was impossible to learn the occasion of this increase. It is now known that the Blue Nile, flowing out of the mountainous parts of Abyssinia, is the sole cause of the periodic overflow of the Nile. Without the tropical rains of the Ethiopian tablelands, there would be no great rise nor any fertilising deposits. Without the White Nile, which runs steadily from the perennial reservoirs of the great Central African lakes, the Lower Nile would assume the character of an intermittent wady, such as the neighbouring Khor Baraka, periodically flushed by the discharge of the torrential downpours from Abyssinia. Though there is a periodical increase in the flow of the upper waters of the White Nile, yet the effect of this, lower down, is minimised by the dense quantities of vegetable drift, which, combining with the forest of aquatic growth, forms those vast barriers, known by the name of sudd, which not only arrest navigation but are able to dam up large bodies of water.

The sudd, it is supposed, stopped the advance of the Roman centurions who were sent up the Nile in the days of Nero. Sir Samuel Baker was the one who first pointed out the great disadvantage of allowing the vegetable matter to accumulate, both to merchants and to those who were employed to suppress the slave-trade. In the year 1863 the two branches of the White Nile were blocked above their junction at Lake No. Once blocked, the accumulation rapidly increased from the stoppage of outlet, forming the innumerable floating islands which at this part of the Nile customarily float down-stream. A marsh of vast extent had been formed, and to all appearance, as Baker narrates, the White Nile had disappeared. Baker cut through fifty miles of the sudd, and urged the khedive to reopen the Nile. The work was successfully undertaken by Ishmail Ayub Pasha, and the White Nile became clear for large vessels when Gordon reached Khartum in 1874. It is practically impossible to keep the central provinces of the Nile open to civilisation unless the course of the Nile is free. Yet in 1878 the obstruction had been renewed, and during the occupation of these provinces by the rebel dervishes under the Mahdi and the califa the Nile was completely blocked, as formerly, at Lake No. The alarming failure of the Nile flood in 1899—1900 was generally attributed to this blockade, and in 1899 fifty thousand dollars was placed at the disposal of the governor-general for reopening the White Nile by removing the vast accumulation of sudd which blocked the Bahr-el-Jebel from Lake No almost as far as Shambeh. The work was started under the direction of Sir William Garstin in 1899. In 1900 the greater part of the sudd had been removed by the strenuous labours of Major Peake, and the Nile again became navigable from Khartum to Rejaf. The sudd was found to be piled up and of almost as close a structure as peat. It was sawn out in blocks ten feet square and carried away by gunboats. In the years 1901—02 further progress was made, and twenty thousand dollars appropriated for the work; and by means of constant patrolling the sudd is now practically absent from the whole course of the White Nile.

The discharge of the flood waters from the Upper Nile begins to make itself felt in Lower Nubia and Egypt in the month of June, at first slightly, and after the middle of July much more rapidly, the river continuing to rise steadily till the first week in October, when it reaches high-water mark, nearly fifty-four or fifty-five feet at the Egyptian frontier, and twenty-five or twenty-six feet at Cairo. A subsidence then sets in, and continues till low-water level is again reached, usually about the end of May. The floods are then much higher and confined to a narrower space in the Nubian section of the Nile, while they gradually die out in the region of the Delta, where the excess seawards is discharged by the Rosetta and Damietta branches. In place of the old Nilometers, the amount of the rise of the Nile is now reported by telegraph from meteorological stations.

It is popularly supposed that at every rise the plains of the Delta are inundated, but this is not the case. The actual overflow of the banks of the river and canals is the exception, and when it happens is most disastrous. The irrigation of fields and plantations is effected by slow infiltration through the retaining dykes, which are prevented from bursting by the process of slow absorption. The first lands to be affected are not those which are nearest to the dyke, but those which are of the lowest level, because the waters, in percolating through under the ground, reach the surface of these parts first. In Manitoba during a dry season sometimes the roots of the wheat strike down deep enough to reach the reservoir of moisture under ground. In Egypt this underground moisture is what is counted upon, but it is fed by a special and prepared system, and is thus brought to the roots of the plants artificially.



An analysis of the Nile alluvium, which has accumulated in the course of ages to a thickness of from three to four feet above the old river-bed, shows that it contains a considerable percentage of such fertilising substances as carbonate of lime and magnesia, silicates of aluminum, carbon, and several oxides. Where the water has to be raised to higher levels, two processes are used. The primitive shadoof of native origin figured on a monument as far back as 3,300 years ago, and the more modern sakieh was apparently introduced in later times from Syria and Persia. The shadoof is used on small farms, and the sakieh is more often used for larger farms and plantations. These contrivances line the whole course of the Nile from Lower Egypt to above Khartum. The shadoof will raise six hundred gallons ten feet in an hour, and consists of a pole weighted at one end, with a bucket at the other; when the water is raised the weight counterbalances the weight of the full bucket. The sakieh, which will raise twelve hundred gallons twenty or twenty-four feet in an hour, is a modified form of a Persian wheel, made to revolve by a beast of burden; it draws an endless series of buckets up from the water, and automatically empties them into a trough or other receptacle. In former times these appliances were heavily taxed and made the instruments of oppression, but these abuses have been reformed since Egypt came under a more humane form of government.

Another interesting feature of the water ways of Egypt is the intermittent watercourses. The largest of these is the Khor Baraka (Barka), which flows out towards Tapan, south of Suakin. It presents some analogy to the Nile, and in part was undoubtedly a perennial stream 250 miles long, and draining seven or eight thousand square miles. At present its flat sandy bed, winding between well-wooded banks, is dry for a great part of the year. This route is extensively used for the caravan trade between Suakin and Kassala. During September the water begins to flow, but is spasmodic. After the first flood the natives plant their crops, but sometimes the second flow, being too great, cannot be confined to the limits prepared for it, and the crops are carried away and the sowing must of necessity be started again.



The canals of Egypt are of great aid in extending the beneficial influence of the inundations of the Nile. In Lower Egypt is the Mahmudiyeh Canal, connecting Alexandria with the Rosetta branch, and following the same direction as an ancient canal which preceded it.

Mehemet Ali constructed this canal, which is about fifty miles long and one hundred feet broad. It is believed that twelve thousand labourers perished during its construction. Between the Rosetta and the Damietta branches of the Nile there are other canals, such as the Manuf, which connects the two branches of the river at a point not far from the Delta. East of the Damietta branch are other canals, occupying the ancient river-beds of the Tanitic and Pelusiac branches of the Nile. One of these is called the canal of the El-Muiz, from the first Fatimite caliph who ruled in Egypt, and who ordered it to be constructed. Another is named the canal of Abul-Munegga, from the name of the Jew who executed this work under the caliph El-'Amir, in order to bring water into the province of Sharkiyah. This last canal is connected with the remains of the one which in ancient times joined the Nile with the Red Sea. After falling into neglect it has again in part been restored and much increased in length as the Sweet Water Canal.

Further mention may also be made of the great canal called the Bahr-Yusef, or River Joseph, which is important enough to be classed as a ramification of the Nile itself. As has been mentioned, this water way runs parallel with the Nile on the west side below Cairo for about 350 miles to Farshut, and is the most important irrigation canal in Egypt. It is a series of canals rather than one canal. Tradition states that this canal was repaired by the celebrated Saladin. Another tradition, relating that the canal existed in the time of the Pharaohs, has recently been proved to be correct.

Egypt possesses not only the greatest natural water way in the world, but also the greatest artificial water way—the Suez Canal. Before the opening of this canal there were in the past other canals which afforded communication between the Red Sea and the Mediterranean. These ancient canals differed in one respect from the Suez Canal, since they were all fed by the fresh waters of the Nile. One of these still remains in use, and is called the Fresh Water Canal. According to Aristotle, Strabo, and Pliny, Sesostris was the first to conceive and carry out the idea of a water connection between the two seas, by means of the Pelusiac branch of the Nile from Avaris to Bubastis, and by rendering navigable the irrigation canal which already existed between Bubastis and Heroopolis. It is believed by some that the fragment bearing the oval of Ramses II. found near the course of the present canal affords confirmation of this assertion.

The first authentic account of the carrying out of the conception of an inter-sea water way is to be found in the time of Pharaoh Necho II., about the year 610 B.C. Herodotus records of Necho that he was "the first to attempt the construction of the canal to the Red Sea." This canal tapped the Nile at Bubastis, near Zagazig, and followed closely the line of modern Wady Canal to Heroopolis, the site of which lies in the neighbourhood of Toussun and Serapeum, between the Bitter Lakes and Lake Tinseh. At that date the Red Sea reached much farther inland than it does now, and was called in the upper portion the Heroopolite Gulf. The expanse of brackish water, now known as the Bitter Lakes, was then, in all probability, directly connected with the Red Sea. The length of this canal, according to Pliny, was sixty-two miles, or about fifty-seven English miles. This length, allowing for the sinuosity of the valley traversed, agrees with the distance between the site of old Bubastis and the present head of the Bitter Lakes. The length given by Herodotus of more than one thousand stadia (114 miles) must be understood to include the whole distance between the two seas, both by the Nile and by the canal. Herodotus relates that it cost the lives of 120,000 men to cut the canal. He says that the undertaking was abandoned because of a warning from an oracle that the barbarians alone, meaning the Persians, would benefit by the success of the enterprise.



The true reason for relinquishing the plan probably was that the Egyptians believed the Red Sea to have been higher in altitude than the Nile. They feared that if the canal were opened between the Nile and the Red Sea the salt water would flow in and make the waters of the Nile brackish. This explanation would indicate a lack of knowledge of locks and sluices on the part of the Egyptians.

The work of Necho was continued by Darius, the son of Hystaspes (520 B.C.). The natural channel of communication between the Heroopolite Gulf and the Red Sea had begun to fill up with silt even in the time of Necho, and a hundred years later, in the time of Darius, was completely blocked, so that it had to be entirely cleaned out to render it navigable. The traces of this canal can still be plainly seen in the neighbourhood of Shaluf, near the south end of the Bitter Lakes. The present fresh-water canal was also made to follow its course for some distance between that point and Suez. Persian monuments have been found by Lepsius in the neighbourhood, commemorating the work of Darius. On one of these the name of Darius is written in the Persian cuneiform characters, and on a cartouche in the Egyptian form. Until this date it therefore appears that ships sailed up the Pelusiac branch of the Nile to Bubastis, and thence along the canal to Heroopolis, where the cargoes were transhipped to the Red Sea. This inconvenient transfer of cargoes was remedied by the next Egyptian sovereign, who bestowed much care on the water connection between the two seas.

Ptolemy Philadelphus (285 B.C.), in addition to cleaning out and thoroughly restoring the two canals, joined the fresh-water canal with the Heroopolite Gulf by means of a lock and sluices, which permitted the passage of vessels, and were effective in preventing the salt water from mingling with the fresh water. At the point where the canal joined the Heroopolite Gulf to the Red Sea, Ptolemy founded the town of Arsinoe, a little to the north of the modern Suez.

The line of communication between the two seas was impassable during the reign of Cleopatra (31 b.c.). It is believed by some that it was restored during the reign of the Roman emperor Trajan (98-117). During this period the Pelusiac branch of the Nile was very low, the water having almost completely deserted this formerly well-filled course. If Trajan, therefore, undertook to reopen the water way, he must have tapped the Nile much higher up, in order to reach a plentiful supply of water. The old canal near Cairo, which elsewhere joined the line of the former canal on the way to the Bitter Lakes, was once called "Amnis Trajanus," and from this it has been inferred that Trajan was really the builder, and that during his reign this canal was cleaned and rendered navigable. As there is no further evidence than the name to prove that Trajan undertook so important an enterprise, the "Amnis Trajanus" was probably constructed during the Arabic period.

When Amr had conquered Egypt, according to another account, the caliph Omar ordered him to ship rich supplies of grain to Mecca and Medina, because during the pilgrimages these cities and often the whole of Hedjaz suffered severely from famine. As it was extremely difficult to send large quantities of provisions across the desert on the backs of camels, it is supposed that to facilitate this transportation Omar ordered the construction of the canal from a point near Cairo to the head of the Red Sea. On account of his forethought in thus providing for the pilgrims to the Hedjaz, Omar received the title of "Prince of the Faithful" (Emir el-Momeneen), which thenceforth was adopted by his successors in the caliphate. One hundred and thirty-four years after this time, El-Mansur, the second caliph of the Abbasid dynasty, is said to have closed the canal to prevent supplies from being shipped to one of the descendants of Ali who had revolted at Medina. Since that time it is probable that it has never been reopened, although there is a report that the Sultan Hakim rendered it available for the passage of boats in the year A.D. 1000, after which it was neglected and became choked with sand. While not thereafter used for navigation, there were parts which during the time of the annual inundation of the Nile were filled with water, until Mehemet Ali prevented this. The parts filled during the inundation extended as far as Sheykh Hanaydik, near Toussun and the Bitter Lakes.

The old canal which left the Nile at Cairo had long ceased to flow beyond the outskirts of the city, and the still more ancient canal from the neighbourhood of Bubastis, now known as the Wady Canal, extended only a few miles in the direction of the isthmus as far as Kassassin. During the construction of the Suez Canal the need of supplying the labourers with fresh water was imperative. The company, therefore, determined in 1861 to prolong the canal from Kassassin to the centre of the isthmus, and in the year 1863 they brought the fresh-water canal as far as Suez. In one or two places the bed of the old canal was cleared out and made to serve the new canal. The level of the fresh-water canal is about twenty feet above that of the Suez Canal, which it joins at Ismailia by means of two locks. The difference of level between it and the Red Sea is remedied by four locks constructed between Nefeesh and its terminus at Suez. Its average depth of water at high Nile is six feet, and at low Nile three feet.

A canal from Bulak, near Cairo, passing by Heliopolis and Belbeys, and joining the Wady Canal a few miles east of Zagazig, restores the line of water communication between the Nile and the Red Sea as it existed perhaps in the time of Trajan, and certainly as it was in the time of the Caliph Omar. The improvement of this canal as a means of transit is local and external only.

Napoleon Bonaparte was the first in modern times to take up the subject of a water connection between the two seas. In 1798 he examined the traces of the old canal of Necho and his successors, and ordered Monsieur Lepere to survey the isthmus and prepare a project for uniting the two seas by a direct canal. The result of this French engineer's labours was to discover a supposed difference of thirty feet between the Red Sea at high tide and the Mediterranean at low tide. As this inequality of level seemed to preclude the idea of a direct maritime canal, a compromise was recommended.

Owing to the exertions of Lieutenant Waghorn, the route through Egypt for the transmission of the mails between England and India was determined upon in 1839. The Peninsular and Oriental Company established a service of steamers between England and Alexandria, and between Suez and India. In spite of this endeavour nothing was actually accomplished with regard to a canal until 1846, when a mixed commission was appointed to enquire into the subject. This commission entirely exploded the error into which Lepere had fallen in reporting a difference of level between the two seas.

A plan was projected in 1855 by M. Linant Bey and M. Mougel Bey, under the superintendence of M. de Les-seps, who had already received a firman of concession from Said Pasha. This plan recommended a direct canal between Suez and Pelusium, which should pass through the Bitter Lakes, Lake Tinseh, Ballah, and Menzaleh, and connecting with the sea at each end by means of a lock. A fresh-water canal from Bulak to the centre of the isthmus and thence through Suez, with a conduit for conveying water to Pelusium, was also proposed. This project was in 1856 submitted to an international commission company composed of representatives from England, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Austria, Prussia, and Spain, and the following modification was suggested: that the line of the canal to the north should be slightly altered and brought to a point seventeen and a half miles west of Pelusium, this change being determined upon from the fact that the water at this point was from twenty-five to thirty feet deep at a distance of two miles from the coast, whereas at Pelusium this depth of water was only to be found at a distance of five miles from the coast. It was suggested that the plan for locks be abolished, and the length of the jetties at Suez and Port Said be diminished. Various other details of a minor character were determined, and this project was finally accepted and carried through by the Suez Canal Company.



In 1854 M. Ferdinand de Lesseps, whose father was the first representative of France in Egypt after the occupation, and who was chosen consul at Cairo (1831—1838), obtained a preliminary concession from Said Pasha, authorising him to form a company for the purpose of excavating a canal between the two seas, and laying down the connections on which the concession was granted. This was followed by the drawing up and revision of the project mentioned above, and by the renewal in 1856 of the first concession with certain modifications and additions. Meanwhile the British government, under the influence of Lord Palmerston, then foreign secretary, endeavoured for various political reasons to place obstacles in the way of the enterprise, and so far succeeded in this unworthy attempt as to prevent the sultan from giving his assent to the concessions made by the viceroy of Egypt. Nothing, however, could daunt the intrepid promoter, M. de Lesseps. He declared his motto to be "Pour principe de commencer par avoir de la con-fiance." Undeterred by intrigues, and finding that his project met with a favourable reception throughout the Continent of Europe, he determined, in 1858, to open a subscription which would secure funds for the undertaking. The capital, according to the statistics of the company, approved in the firman of the concession, was to consist of forty million dollars in shares of one hundred dollars each. More than half of this amount was subscribed for, and eventually, in 1860, Said Pasha consented to take up the remaining unallotted shares, amounting to more than twelve million dollars. Disregarding the opposition of the English government, and ignoring the Sublime Porte, which was influenced by England, M. de Lesseps began his work in 1859, and on the 25th of April of that year the work was formally commenced, in the presence of M. de Lesseps and four directors of the company, by the digging of a small trench along the projected line of the canal, on the narrow strip of land between Lake Menzaleh and the Mediterranean. This was followed by the establishment of working encampments in different parts of the isthmus.

Although the first steps were thus taken, incredible difficulties prevented de Lesseps from pushing forward with his work. Towards the close of 1862 the actual results were only a narrow "rigole" cut from the Mediterranean to Lake Tinseh, and the extension of the freshwater canal from Rasel-Wady to the same point. The principal work done in 1863 was the continuation of the fresh-water canal to Suez. At this point a fresh obstacle arose which threatened to stop the work altogether. Among the articles of the concession of 1856 was one providing that four-fifths of the workmen on the canal should be Egyptians. Said Pasha consented to furnish these workmen by conscription from different parts of Egypt, and the company agreed to pay them at a rate equal to about two-thirds less than was given for similar work in Europe, and one-third more than they received in their own country, and to provide them with food, dwellings, etc. In principle this was the corvee, or forced labour. The fellaheen were taken away from their homes and set to work at the canal, though there is no doubt that they were as well treated and better paid than at home. The injustice and impolicy of this clause had always been insisted upon to the sultan by the English government, and when Ismail Pasha became viceroy, in the year 1863, he saw that the constant drain upon the working population required to keep twenty thousand fresh labourers monthly for the canal was a loss to the country for which nothing could compensate. In the early part of 1864 he refused to continue to send the monthly contingent, and the work was almost stopped.

By the consent of all the parties, the subjects in dispute were submitted to the arbitrage of the French Emperor Napoleon III., who decided that the two concessions of 1854 and 1856, being in the nature of a contract and binding on both parties, the Egyptian government should pay an indemnity equal to the fellah labour and $6,000,000 for the resumption of the lands originally granted, two hundred metres only being retained on each side of the canal for the erection of workshops, the deposit of soil, etc., and $3,200,000 for the fresh-water canal, and the right of levying tolls on it. The Egyptian government undertook to keep it in repair and navigable, and to allow the company free use of it for any purpose. The sum total of these payments amounted to $16,800,000, and was to be paid in sixteen instalments from 1864 to 1879.

The company now proceeded to replace by machinery the manual labour, and, thanks to the energy and ingenuity of the principal contractors, Messrs. Borel and Lavalley, that which seemed first of all to threaten destruction to the enterprise now led to its ultimate success. Without the machinery thus called into action, it is probable that the canal would never have been completed when it was. The ingenuity displayed in the invention of this machinery, and its application to this vast undertaking, constituted one of the chief glories in the enterprise of M. de Lesseps.

The work now proceeded without interruption of any kind; but at the end of the year 1867 it became evident that more money would be needed, and a subscription was opened for the purpose of obtaining $20,000,000 by means of one hundred dollar shares, issued at $600 a share, and bearing interest at the rate of five dollars a share. When more money was needed in 1869, the government agreed to renounce the interest on the shares held by it for twenty-five years, and more bonds were issued.

By help of these subventions and loans the work was pushed onward with great vigour. The sceptical were gradually losing their scepticism, and all the world was awakening to see what an immense advantage to civilisation the triumph of de Lesseps' engineering enterprise would be.



The great Frenchman had shown consummate skill as an organiser, but still more perhaps as an astute diplomatist, who knew how to upset the machinations of his numerous and powerful opponents by judicious counter-strokes of policy. By the beginning of 1869, the great labours of the company had very nearly reached their completion. The waters, flowing from the Mediterranean, first entered into the Bitter Lakes on March 18, 1869. Ismail Pasha was present to watch the initial success of the grand undertaking, and predicted that in a very short space of time the canal would be open to the ships of all the world. The first steamer which made the passage was one which carried M. de Lesseps on board, and which steamed the whole length of the canal September, 1869, in an interval of fifteen hours. This was a great triumph for the intrepid and persevering engineer, whose enterprise had been scoffed at by many men of the greatest European fame, and the completion of which had been delayed by incredible obstacles arising from jealousy or want of funds. By this time the unworthy tactics of the former Palmerston ministry of Great Britain in opposition to a scheme of such universal helpfulness to commerce had been succeeded by an official interest in the success of the enterprise which grew from sentiment, in the first instance, to a willingness later to buy up all the shares held by the Egyptian government. M. de Lesseps gave formal notice early in September that the canal would be opened for navigation on November 17, 1869. The khedive made costly preparations in order that the event might become an international celebration. Invitations were sent to all the sovereigns of Europe. The sultan refused to be present, but the Empress Eugenie accepted the invitation in the name of the French people. The Austrian emperor, the Prussian crown prince, and Prince Amadeus of Italy also took part in the festivity. The initial ceremony was on November 15th, at Port Said. Emperor Francis Joseph landed at midday, and was received with pomp and magnificence by the Khedive Ismail. There were splendid decorations in the streets and triumphal arches were raised. Meanwhile salutes were exchanged between the batteries and the ships of war in the harbour. At night there were gorgeous illuminations and fireworks. The khedive gave a grand ball on his own yacht, at which the Emperor of Austria and all the distinguished guests were in attendance. The French empress then arrived in Alexandria, and was received by Ismail and Francis Joseph with salutes of guns and the acclamations of the people. The next day the French imperial yacht Aigle, with the empress on board, proceeded to steam up the canal, being followed by forty vessels. They reached Ismailia after eight hours and a half, and were there met by vessels coming from the south end at Suez. On November 19th the fleet of steamers, led by the French imperial yacht, set out for Suez. They anchored overnight at the Bitter Lakes, and on November 21st the whole fleet of forty-five steamers arrived at Suez and entered the Red Sea. The empress, accompanied by the visiting fleet, returned on November 22nd, and reached the Mediterranean on the 23rd.

England, the country which more than any other had opposed the progress of the canal, derived more benefit than any other country from its completion. In 1875 the British government bought 176,600 shares from the khedive for a sum of nearly $20,000,000; and at the present time the value of these shares has risen more than fourfold. By this acquisition the British government became the largest shareholder. Of the shipping which avails itself of this route to the East, which is shorter by six thousand miles than any other, about eighty per cent, is British. In 1891, of 4,207 ships, with a grain tonnage of 12,218,000, as many as 3,217 of 9,484,000 tons were British.

Extensive works were undertaken in 1894 for the widening of the canal. Illuminated buoys and electric lights have been introduced to facilitate the night traffic, so that, proceeding continuously, instead of stopping overnight, ships can now pass through in less than twenty hours in place of the thirty-five or forty hours which were formerly taken to effect the passage. These greater facilities postponed the need of discussing the project for running a parallel canal to the East which some time ago was thought to be an impending necessity on account of the blockage of the canal by the number of vessels passing through its course.

By the Anglo-French Convention of 1888, the canal had acquired an international character. Both the water way itself and the isthmus for three miles on either side were declared neutral territory, exempt from blockade, fortification, or military occupation of any kind. The passage is to remain open for all time to ships of all nations, whether they are war-ships or merchantmen or liners, or whether the country to which they belong is engaged in war or enjoying peace. Within this convention was included the fresh-water canal which supplies drinking water to Ismailia and Port Said, and all the floating population about the banks of the Suez Canal. On April 8, 1904, by the terms of a new Anglo-French Colonial Treaty, it has been jointly agreed that the provisions of the Convention of 1888 shall remain in force for the next thirty years.

Egypt was the scene of the earliest of all advances in engineering science. The system of irrigation, which originated in the days of the oldest Egyptian dynasties, has remained practically the same through all the intervening centuries until very recent times. During every period of vigorous government the rulers of Egypt paid special attention to irrigation canals and sluices, through which the flood waters could be brought to some hitherto uncultivated area. The famous barrage, projected early in the nineteenth century and only rendered efficient for what it was intended since the British occupation, made very little alteration in the actual supply of water during the seasons of low water in the Nile. The most serious problem is how to ward off the periodical famine years, of which there has been record from the earliest ages, and of which the Book of Genesis has left an account in the history of Joseph and the seven years of plenty and seven years of famine. Without creating such a vast reservoir in the upper waters of the Nile, that the storage there retained can be available in years of low water to fill the river to its accustomed level, it is impossible to prevent the calamity occasioned by leaving many districts of Egypt without cultivation for one or more seasons. With the desire of accomplishing this, Sir Benjamin Baker, the leading authority on engineering works in Egypt, prepared 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.



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 the waters are held back for a distance of 140 miles up the course of the river. The reservoir is filled during the months of January and February, and from April to the end of August the water is let out for irrigation purposes from the bottom of the reservoir, thus enabling the sediment, which is of such value, to be carried out through the sluices. Four or five waterings are allowed to percolate from it to the various regions which are thus brought under cultivation, and besides this the main supply of the river itself is artificially increased at the same time.

The dam has been constructed of granite ashlar taken from quarries near Aswan. These quarries are the very same from which the ancient obelisks were hewn. The amount of rock used was about one million tons in weight. In building the dam it was found to be very difficult to lay the foundation, since the bottom of the river proved to be unsound, although in the preliminary reports it had been declared to be of solid granite. In some instances it was found necessary to dig down for forty feet, in order to lay a perfectly secure foundation on which the heavy wall could be superimposed. This required much additional labour, and great risk and damage was encountered during the progress of the work at the date of the impending rise of the waters of the Nile. Rubble dams were raised to ward off the waters from the point where it was necessary to excavate. The holes were gradually filled with solid blocks of granite; then the base of the structure, one hundred feet in width, was laid, and the massive piers, capable of resisting the immense pressure of the water during the height of the floods, were raised, and the whole edifice was at length completed with great rapidity by the aid of many thousand workmen, just before the rise in the Nile occurred. The official opening of the dam took place on the 10th of December, 1902.

The dam at Aswan is the greatest irrigation project ever yet undertaken, but is by no means the last one likely to be executed in relation to the waters of the Nile. A smaller dam is to be constructed at Assiut, in order to supply a system of irrigation in the neighbourhood of that city, and also to carry water across to thousands of acres between this region and Cairo. This project is planned somewhat after the design of the barrage which is below Cairo.

It is impossible to forecast what engineering skill may have in store for the future of Egypt. One may hope, at least, that the most prosperous days of the Pharaohs, the Ptolemies, and the Romans will be reproduced once more for the modern Egyptians, as an outcome of the wise administration which has originated through the occupation of the country by the English, as an international trust held for civilisation. By aid of British initiative, Egypt now controls a vast empire in equatorial Africa and the Sudan, and the great water ways of this immense territory are being gradually brought under such control that the maximum advantage to all the population will be the necessary result. The whole Nile is now opened to commerce. The British have guaranteed equal rights, and what has been called the policy of the "open door," for the commerce of all nations.

The history of the modern exploration of the Nile is closely associated with the history of Egypt in modern times. The men who first visited Egypt and ascended the Nile valley were in almost every case Indo-Euro-peans. The early Egyptians were familiar perhaps with the Nile as far as Khartum, and with the Blue Nile up to its source in Lake Tsana, but they showed little or no interest in exploring the White Nile. In 457 B.C., Herodotus entered Egypt, and ascended the Nile as far as the First Cataract. He then learned many things about its upper waters, and made enquiries about the territories which lay beyond. He heard that the source was unknown; that there was a centre of civilisation in a city of the Ethiopians, in the bend of the Nile at Meroe (Merawi of to-day), but about the regions beyond he was unable to learn anything. Eratosthenes, the earliest geographer of whom we have record, was born in 276 b. c. at Cyrene, North Africa. From the information he gathered and edited, he sketched a nearly correct route of the Nile to Khartum. He also inserted the two Abyssinian affluents, and suggested that lakes were the source of the river.

When Rome extended her domains over Egypt, in 30 B.C., the interest of the Romans was aroused in the solution of the problem of the discovery of the source of the Nile. Strabo set out with AElius Gallus, the Roman Governor of Egypt, on a journey of exploration up the Nile as far as Philae, at the First Cataract. About 30 B.C. Greek explorers by the names of Bion, Dalion, and Si-mondes were engaged in active exploration of the Nile above the First Cataract and perhaps south of Khartum, according to the account of Pliny the Elder, writing in 50 A.D. The Emperor Nero, in A.D. 66, sent an expedition up the Nile, and its members journeyed as far as the modern Fashoda and perhaps even beyond the White Nile. Their advance was impeded by the sudd, and, after writing discouraging reports, their attempt was abandoned. Among the Greek merchants who traded on the East African coast was one named Diogenes, who had been informed by an Arab that by a twenty-five days' journey one could gain access to a chain of great lakes, two of which were the headwaters of the White Nile. They also said that there was a mountain range, named from its brilliant appearance the Mountains of the Moon. He was informed that the Nile formed from the two head streams, flowed through marshes until it united with the Blue Nile, and then it flowed on until it entered into well-known regions. Diogenes reported this to a Syrian geographer named Marinus of Tyre, who wrote of it in his Geography during the first century of the Christian era. The writings of Marinus disappeared, it is supposed, when the Alexandrian Library was scattered, but luckily Gladius Ptolemy quoted them, and thus they have been preserved for us. Ptolemy wrote, in 150 A.D., the first clearly intelligible account of the origin of the White Nile, the two lakes, Victoria and Albert Nyanza, and the Mountains of the Moon. But no less than 1,740 years elapsed before justice could be done to this ancient geographer, and his account verified. It was Sir Henry M. Stanley who discovered the Ruwanzori mountain range, corresponding to the classical Mountains of the Moon, and who thus justified Ptolemy's view of the topography of Africa. For many years after Ptolemy, the work of exploring the sources of the Nile was entirely discontinued, and the solution of the problem was still wrapped in impenetrable mystery.

The first modern explorer of any consequence who came from Great Britain was a Scotchman named Bruce. In 1763 he travelled through many ports of Northern Africa and visited the Levant, and subsequently Syria and Palestine. Wherever he went he drew sketches of antiquities, which are now preserved in the British Museum. Landing in Africa in 1786, he went up the Nile as far as Aswan. From there he travelled to the Red Sea and reached Jiddah, the port of Hajas. He then returned to Africa, stopping at Massawra, and from there penetrated into the heart of Abyssinia. The emperor received him with favour and suffered him to reach the Blue Nile, which to the mind of Bruce had always been considered as the main stream of the Nile. Having determined the latitude and longitude, he went down the Blue Nile as far as the site of Khartum, where the waters of the White Nile join with those of the Blue Nile. He next proceeded to Berber, and crossed the desert to Korosko, returning, after a three years' journey, in the year 1773. In journeying through France many learned men took a great interest in the story of his explorations, but he was bitterly disappointed to hear that he had not been the first to reach the sources of the Blue Nile. Partly for this reason he delayed publishing his travels for seventeen years after his return. Bruce was a truthful and accurate writer, but nevertheless his book was received on all sides with incredulity. Although received at the British court, he was not given any special honours or decorations. He first pointed out the great importance to England of controlling the Egyptian route to India, and he also secured for English merchants a concession on the Red Sea.

In 1812, John Ludwig Burckhardt, of Swiss nationality, the first among Europeans, made a pilgrimage to Mecca and then travelled up the Nile to Korosko, after which he crossed the desert to Berber and Shendy. His death occurred after his return to Cairo, and he left a valuable collection of Oriental manuscripts to the University of Cambridge, England, which were published after his death.

In 1827, a Belgian, named Adolphe Lisiant, ascended the White Nile to within 150 miles of Khartum. The expedition which he led was aided by an English society, called the "African Association," which became afterwards a part of the Royal Geographical Society. Many explorers visited the White Nile between 1827 and 1845. In 1845, John Pethrick, a Welshman, explored the Nile for coal and precious metals in the interest of Mehemet Ali. After the death of this pasha, Pethrick visited El-Obeid in Kordofan as a trader, and remained there for five years. In 1853 he ventured upon an enterprise relating to the ivory trade. For this purpose he travelled backwards and forwards upon the White Nile and the Bahr-el-Ghazal for a period of six years, reaching some of the important affluents of the Bahr-el-Ghazal, the Jur and the Jalo, or the Rol. Returning to England, he was commissioned to undertake a relief expedition to help Captains Speke and Grant, who had set out upon their journey of exploration, and in the year 1861 he returned to Central Africa. Interest in the slave-trade deterred him from following the directions under which he had been sent out, namely, to bring relief to Speke and Grant. Sir Samuel Baker anticipated him in relieving the expedition, and this so angered Speke that he attempted to have Pethrick deprived of his consular position. Pethrick died in 1882.

When Lieutenant Richard Francis Burton had completed his famous journey through Hedjaz to the sacred city of Mecca, he called at the port of Aden at the southwest extremity of Arabia. While there, he made friends with the authorities, and persuaded them to allow him to penetrate Africa through Somaliland, which is situated to the southwest of Abyssinia. He hoped by an overland journey westbound to strike the Nile at its headwaters. John H. Speke accompanied Burton on his journey, and thus gained his first experience of African exploration. Unfortunately this expedition was not a success, for the Somali were so suspicious of the object of the travellers that they forced them to return to the coast.

[Illustraton: 277.jpg THE MAIN STREAM OF THE NILE]

Once more, in 1856, the same party started farther south from Zanzibar. Hearing of a great inland lake, they pressed forwards to make an exploration, but were prevented by the Masai tribes. Burton was now laid up with fever, and Speke formed a large party and crossed the Unyamivezi and Usukuma. On July 30, 1858, they were fortunate enough to cross one of the bays of the southern half of Lake Victoria Nyanza. They struck northwards, and, on August 3rd, gained sight of the open waters of the great lake. Speke did not realise the vast area of the lake at this time, and put down its width at about one hundred miles. As he had promised Burton to return at a certain pre-arranged date, he went back to the coast. Burton, however, was unreasonable enough to be displeased with Speke's discovery, and the two fell into strained relations. On arriving at the coast, Speke at once went back to England, and there raised funds to make a longer and more complete exploration. He was naturally anxious to learn more about the great lake in the middle of the continent, and, besides this, he thought that he could demonstrate to the satisfaction of the scientific world that this vast basin of water was the source of the White Nile. Captain James A. Grant asked leave to accompany Speke, and became his efficient lieutenant. Grant was a good shot, a matter of importance, for it was almost certain that the party would have to confront the danger of being surrounded by wild beasts and hostile natives. He was also a good geologist and painted well in water-colours, and proved himself to be a capable lieutenant to the leader of the party. The Indian government sent the expedition a quantity of ammunition and surveying instruments.

The party started from Zanzibar for the interior in October, 1860. At Usugara they were detained by the illness of Captain Grant and some of the Hottentot retainers. A number of the instruments were now sent back in order to lighten the burdens, and among other things was returned the cumbrous photographic apparatus, which was the only kind in use in the sixties. At Ugogo serious trouble arose with the native chiefs, who demanded tolls from the party. Many of the remaining porters here deserted, and others were frightened by the hostility of the local tribes. When at length they reached the Unyamivezi most of the beasts of burden had died, and half of the stores they had intended to bring with them were found to have been stolen by the natives. The Arabs here told Speke that there was another lake besides the Victoria, whose waters, according to some, were reported to be salty.

Fierce internecine wars were now being waged between the tribes of the locality, which made any thought of progress, so long as they lasted, an impossibility. Speke, having successfully endeavoured to negotiate a peace between the chief Mouwa and the Arabs of the region, resolved upon the bold enterprise of pushing on without Grant and the supplies towards Buzina, the nearest country ruled by Bahima chiefs. The venture, however, was a fruitless one, and he bravely struggled to reach Usui. In this he succeeded, remaining there till October, 1861, when he went through the region of the Suwaroras, who demanded excessive tolls for permission to pass through their territory. Proceeding into the wilderness, they were met by envoys from Rumanika, a king whose court they intended to visit, and who had heard in advance of their impending journey. The messengers of the king received them well and brought them to the court. Rumanika now desired them to remain at his capital until he had sent word before them that the party intended to go to Uganda. Grant, about this time, was laid up with an ulcerated leg; and, when the time came for moving forward, Speke was obliged to set out for Uganda alone, which place he entered on January 16, 1862. He became a close friend of the royal family and the chief men, and his beard was a constant source of admiration and conversation.

The illness of Grant prevented him from joining the party at Uganda till the end of May, and on July 7th of the same year, after many delays, they obtained leave from the king to leave Uganda. By July the 28th, Speke had reached the Ripon Falls, where the Victoria Nyanza branch of the Nile flows out of the great lake at the head of Napoleon Gulf. These falls were called after the Marquis of Ripon, who was then the president of the Royal Geographical Society. At this time, Grant, still convalescent, was moving by a more direct route towards Ungaro. Speke met him again on the way thither, and they finished their journey together. After suffering vexatious impositions from the monarch, Speke asked leave to go and visit a new lake which the natives called Lutanzige, but was refused permission. He then sent Bombay, his servant and interlocutor, along the course of the Nile towards the outposts of Pethrick. The messenger returned with hopeful news that there was a clear course open to them in that direction. The whole party then journeyed down the Kafu River to the point where it enters the Nile. On the way thither, they came to the Karuma Falls, and were obliged to march across swampy ground. Finally they met a Sudanese black named Mu-hammed Wad-el-Mek, who was dressed like an Egyptian and who spoke Arabic. Muhammed first of all told them that he had come from Pethrick, but it was later discovered that he was in the employment of Doctor Bono, a trader from Malta. The Sudanese was not anxious that the party should proceed, and told them stories about the impossibility of ascending the river at that time, during the month of December. It was difficult to dissuade Speke, however, and on January 12, 1863, he set out for a place which is now called Affudu. There the party paused for awhile in order to kill enough game to feed the native servants. On the 1st of February, having forced some of the natives into their service as porters, they descended the Nile to its confluence with the Asua River. They next crossed this river, and proceeded onwards to the Nile Rapids, and from thence skirted the borders of the Bari country. On February 15, 1863, they made an entrance into Gondokoro, where the whole party was filled with joy to meet Sir Samuel Baker, who had arrived there on the way out to relieve them. They all advanced together to Khartum, after which Speke and Grant returned to England, in the spring of 1863. Thus was the task of the discovery of the sources of the Nile, which had baffled the seekers for many centuries, at length completed. Speke was received by the Prince of Wales (King Edward VII.), but the satisfaction of being allowed to place an additional motto on his coat-of-arms was the only recognition which he received for his services.

As a result of Speke's discoveries, the Victoria Nyanza took its place on the maps of Africa, and a fair conception had been obtained of the size and shape of Lake Albert Nyanza.



The whole course of the White Nile was also revealed with more or less accuracy, and all the mysterious surmises as to the great flow of the Nile from some unknown headwaters of enormous extent were now solved. It was only necessary to fill in the details of the map in regard to the great lakes and the rivers which flowed into them, and further to investigate the extensive territory between the lakes and the Egyptian settlements to the north. Sir Samuel Baker was the man who more than any other helped to supply the details of the work already accomplished. From Cairo he started on a journey up the course of the Nile. When he had reached Berber, he chose the course of the At-bara, or Blue Nile, the branch which receives the floods of water from the Abyssinian table-lands. He travelled up the western frontier of Abyssinia, proceeding as far as the river Rahad, a river flowing into the Blue Nile from the Egyptian side. From this point Baker turned backwards towards Khartum, which he reached in June, 1862, where he made a stay of some duration. He now made up his mind to search for Speke, and went up the White Nile as far as Gondokoro, where the meeting with Speke took place. Baker left this place March 26, 1863, but met with almost insuperable obstacles in trying to make further advance. The porters deserted, the camels died, and the ammunition and the presents intended to ease the way through the territory of native princes had to be all abandoned. Thus disencumbered, his party ascended the White Nile until they reached the Victoria affluent. The Bauyno tribes now prevented his intended advance to the Albert Nyanza. Baker, however, had the good fortune to be well received by the chieftain Kamurasi, and, as he was at this moment suffering from a severe attack of fever, the friendliness of this Central African chieftain was probably the means of saving his life. The king graciously received Baker's present of a double-barrelled gun, and then sent him onward with two guides and three hundred men. The party now managed to push their way to the shores of the Albert Nyanza. They first arrived at a place called Mbakovia, situated near the south-east coast, and on March 16, 1864, they saw for the first time the great lake itself, which they now named the Albert Nyanza. After a short stay at Mbakovia, they proceeded along the coast of the lake until they reached Magungo, where the Victoria branch of the Nile flows into the Albert Nyanza. Continuing the journey up the source of the Victoria Nile, they discovered the Murchison Falls. When they set out for the Karuma Falls the porters deserted, and after many desperate adventures they at length returned to Khartum in May, 1865. Baker then went on to Berber, and crossed the desert to Suakin on the Red Sea. He returned to England late in the year 1865, and was received with honour and decorated by the queen with a well-earned knighthood.

In the year 1869 Baker entered the service of the Egyptian government, and was commissioned by the viceroy to subdue the regions of Equatorial Africa, and annex them to the Egyptian Empire. To succeed in this enterprise he waged many a war with African tribes like the Boni. On several occasions these conflicts had been forced upon him; on other occasions Baker Pasha was the aggressor, owing to his fixed determination to extend on all sides the limits of the Egyptian Sudan. With all the rulers, however, who treated him well, he remained on terms of loyalty and friendship; and, in time, he inspired them with respect for his fairness and liberality. Baker Pasha scattered the slave-traders on all sides, and, for the time being, effectually broke up their power. The slave-traders of the Sudan were of Arab nationality, and were in the habit of advancing farther, year by year, upon the villages of the defenceless Africans, and spreading their ravages into the heart of Africa. They always attacked the less warlike tribes, and, upon breaking into a negro settlement, would carry off the whole population, except the aged or sick. The slaves were herded together in vast numbers by help of logs of wood sawn in two, with holes cut large enough to enclose the neck of a slave, and the two sides of the log afterwards securely fastened again, thereby yoking together a row of these unfortunate beings. Every year, out of five hundred thousand or more slaves, at least half the number perished.. The markets for the slaves were the cities of the Muhammedans all through North Africa, Syria, Turkey, and Persia. The death-dealing hardships to the slaves were for the most part endured on the long journey to Cairo, or, when the trade was suppressed there, to points north of the Sudan, such as Tripoli, or certain ports on the Red Sea. Those who were hardy enough to reach the slave-markets were usually well treated by their Muhammedan masters. During the time of Baker Pasha's administration, while he was pursuing the slave-traders and establishing Egyptian outposts, the whole course of the Nile from the Great Lakes became well known to the civilised world, though after this period Baker Pasha did not make any further voyages of discovery into unknown parts.

During the years of 1859 and 1860, an adventurous Dutch lady of fortune, Miss Alexandrine Tinne, journeyed up the Nile as far as Gondokoro, and in 1861 she commenced to organise a daring expedition to find the source of the Bahr-el-Ghazel, and explore the territory between the Nile basin and Lake Chad. She started from Khartum, and ascended the Bahr-el-Ghazel as far as the affluent Bahr-el-Hamad. She then crossed overland as far as the Jur and Kosango Rivers, and reached the mountains on the outlying districts of the Nyam-Nyam country. Here the members of the expedition suffered from black-water fever, and only with the greatest difficulty were they able to return to Khartum, where they arrived in July, 1864. In 1868 Miss Tinne, nothing-daunted, started for Lake Chad from Tripoli, with the intention of closing in upon the Nile from the eastern sources of the affluents of the Bahr-el-Ghazel. On reaching Wadi-Aberjong, however, this brave-hearted woman was waylaid by the fierce Tuaregs, and was beheaded August 1, 1868.

In the sixties, Georg Schweinfurth, a native of Riga, in the Baltic provinces of Russia, set out to explore Nubia, Upper Egypt, and Abyssinia for botanical purposes. Subsequently the Royal Academy of Science in Berlin equipped him for an expedition to explore the region of the Bahr-el-Ghazel. He entered the Sudan by Suakin on the Red Sea, and crossed the desert to Berber, reaching Khartum on November 1, 1868. The following January he set out along the course of the White Nile, passed Getina, and examined the vegetation (sudd) which had drifted down from all the affluents of the White Nile. He prolonged his stay for three years on the Bahr-el-Ghazel, solely absorbed in scientific studies, and, unlike his predecessors, he was unconcerned with reforms and attempts to suppress the slave-trade.

Schweinfurth penetrated so far into the heart of Africa that he reached the Congo basin and explored the upper waters of the Welle River, and on his return to Europe he published a work, in 1873, called "The Heart of Africa." In this book he tried to demonstrate that the area of the Victoria Nyanza was taken up by a chain of five lakes.

About this time, in the same year, the famous Henry Morton Stanley returned to London from his adventurous discovery and relief of Dr. David Livingstone. The distinguished missionary and explorer died not long afterwards, and the fame of his brilliant discoveries and heroic life aroused great sympathy and interest in African exploration. The great river which Livingstone had explored was believed by him to have been the Nile, but was more correctly thought by others to have been the Congo River. On account of the interest aroused in Livingstone, the New York Herald and the Daily Telegraph of London decided to send Stanley on a fully equipped expedition to solve the many problems relating to the heart of Africa about which the civilised world was still in the dark.

Stanley chose the route of Zanzibar, and, landing there, he went up the course of the river and crossed the country to the Victoria Nyanza by the way of Unyamwezi. He reached the lake by the end of February, 1875. On March the 8th he set out to explore the shores of the lake, and mapped the whole region, including its bays, islands, and archipelagoes, with a considerable amount of accuracy. He also examined Napoleon Gulf, and reached as far as Ripon Falls, at which point the waters of the lake flow towards the Albert Nyanza. He then verified the accuracy of Speke's supposition that the Victoria Nyanza really was the main source of the White Nile. Stanley set out from Uganda at the end of the year 1875, and travelled across the country to the Congo. About the same time three English surveyors, Colonels Purdy, Colston, and Sidney Enser, made several topographical reports on much of the territory between the Bahr-el-Ghazel, the Shari, and the Nile. Later on, in 1876, General Gordon sent Romolo Gesei, an Italian in the service of the khedive, to navigate and to explore Lake Albert Nyanza. In the following year Colonel Mason, an American, surveyed the lake, of which he made an accurate topographical chart.

In the year 1880, Mr. E. G. Ravenstein, an eminent geographer, made some valuable surveys of eastern equatorial Africa, which had the effect of inciting the Royal Geographical Society to send out, in 1882, an expedition under Joseph Thomson, a brilliant young African explorer, in order to find out a direct route to the Victoria Nyanza. Thomson set out from Momhasa early in the year 1883, but he never succeeded in realising the purpose of his mission.

Emin Pasha, as we have seen, was the governor appointed by the khedive to rule the Egyptian equatorial provinces. He made a few discoveries, such as the Semliki River, which was called by him Divern. Whilst he was engaged in travelling through the Bahr-el-Ghazel district, the revolt of the Mahdi occurred, and Emin Pasha was isolated from the outer world. In the year 1886 Doctor Junker returned to Europe from Emin, and roused great interest by his account of the adventures of the pasha, whom most people had believed to have died, but whom they now learned had set up an independent sovereignty in the heart of Africa, awaiting anxiously the advent of a relief expedition. Then Henry M. Stanley volunteered to go out on a relief expedition to bring Emin Pasha home.

Stanley avoided the route through the German colony on the East, and started upon his ever memorable relief expedition by the Congo route. The veteran adventurer succeeded in relieving Emin Pasha, and, furthermore, he discovered the Mountains of the Moon, called by the natives Ruwenjori, on May 24, 1888. He also traced to its sources the Semliki River, and explored Lake Albert Edward and a gulf of the Victoria to the south-west. The remainder of this famous journey, for the success of which he was knighted as Sir Henry M. Stanley, was outside the basin of the Nile, and is recorded in his book, "Through Darkest Africa."

In 1900, Dr. Donaldson Smith, an American, made an important journey through the countries between the north end of Lake Rudolf and the Mountain Nile.



CHAPTER VI—THE DECIPHERMENT OF THE HIEROGLYPHS*

*The early portion of this chapter is selected, by kind permission of Dr. Henry Smith Williams, from his "History of the Art of Writing," Copyright, 1902 and 1903.

The Rosetta Stone: The Discoveries of Dr. Thomas Young: The Classification of the Egyptian Alphabet by Champollion: Egyptian Love-songs and the Book of the Dead

Conspicuously placed in the great hall of Egyptian antiquities, in the British Museum, is a wonderful piece of sculpture known as the Rosetta Stone. A glance at its graven surface suffices to show that three sets of inscriptions are recorded there. The upper one, occupying about one-fourth of the surface, is a pictured scroll, made up of chains of those strange outlines of serpents, hawks, lions, and so on, which are recognised, even by the least initiated, as hieroglyphics. The middle inscription, made up of lines, angles, and half-pictures, one might suppose to be a sort of abbreviated or shorthand hieroglyphic. The third, or lower, inscription, is manifestly Greek, obviously a thing of words. If the screeds above be also made of words, only the elect have any way of proving the fact.

Fortunately, however, even the least scholarly observer is left in no doubt as to the real import of the thing he sees, for an obliging English label tells us that these three inscriptions are renderings of the same message, and that this message is a "decree of the Priests of Memphis conferring divine honours on Ptolemy V., Epiphanes, King of Egypt, B.C. 195." The label goes on to state that the upper transcription (of which, unfortunately, only parts of the last dozen lines or so remain, the slab being broken) is in "the Egyptian language, in hieroglyphics, or writing of the priests"; the second inscription in the same language, "in demotic, or the writing of the people"; and the third "in the Greek language and character."

Then comes a brief biography of the Rosetta Stone itself, as follows: "This stone was found by the French in 1798 among the ruins of Fort St. Julian, near the Rosetta mouth of the Nile. It passed into the hands of the British by the treaty of Alexandria, and was deposited in the British Museum in the year 1801." There is a whole volume of history in that brief inscription, and a bitter sting thrown in, if the reader chance to be a Frenchman. Yet the facts involved could scarcely be suggested more modestly. They are recorded much more bluntly in a graven inscription on the side of the stone, which runs: "Captured in Egypt by the British Army, 1801." No Frenchman could read those words without a sinking of the heart.

The value of the Rosetta Stone depended on the fact that it gave promise, even when originally inspected, of furnishing a key to the centuries-old mystery of the hieroglyphics. For two thousand years the secret of these strange markings had been forgotten. Nowhere in the world—quite as little in Egypt as elsewhere—had any man the slightest clue to their meaning; there were even those who doubted whether these droll picturings really had any specific meaning, questioning whether they were not merely vague symbols of esoteric religious import and nothing more. And it was the Rosetta Stone that gave the answer to these doubters, and restored to the world a lost language and a forgotten literature.

The trustees of the British Museum recognised that the problem of the Rosetta Stone was one on which the scientists of the world might well exhaust their ingenuity, and they promptly published a carefully lithographed copy of the entire inscription, so that foreign scholarship had equal opportunity with British to try to solve the riddle. How difficult a riddle it was, even with this key in hand, is illustrated by the fact that, though scholars of all nations brought their ingenuity to bear upon it, nothing more was accomplished for a dozen years than to give authority to three or four guesses regarding the nature of the upper inscriptions, which, as it afterwards proved, were quite incorrect and altogether misleading. This in itself is sufficient to show that ordinary scholarship might have studied the Rosetta Stone till the end of time without getting far on the track of its secrets. The key was there, but to apply it required the inspired insight—that is to say, the shrewd guessing power—of genius.

The man who undertook the task had perhaps the keenest scientific imagination and the most versatile profundity of knowledge of his generation—one is tempted to say, of any generation. For he was none other than the extraordinary Dr. Thomas Young, the demonstrator of the vibratory nature of light.

Young had his attention called to the Rosetta Stone by accident, and his usual rapacity for knowledge at once led him to speculate as to the possible aid this tri-lingual inscription might give in the solution of Egyptian problems. Resolving at once to attempt the solution himself, he set to work to learn Koptic, which was rightly believed to represent the nearest existing approach to the ancient Egyptian language. His amazing facility in the acquisition of languages stood him in such good stead that within a year of his first efforts he had mastered Koptic and assured himself that the ancient Egyptian language was really similar to it, and had even made a tentative attempt at the translation of the Egyptian scroll. His results were only tentative, to be sure, yet they constituted the very beginnings of our knowledge regarding the meaning of hieroglyphics. Just how far they carried has been a subject of ardent controversy ever since. Not that there is any doubt about the specific facts; what is questioned is the exact importance of these facts. For it is undeniable that Young did not complete and perfect the discovery, and, as always in such matters, there is opportunity for difference of opinion as to the share of credit due to each of the workers who entered into the discovery.

Young's specific discoveries were these: (1) that many of the pictures of the hieroglyphics stand for the names of the objects actually delineated; (2) that other pictures are sometimes only symbolic; (3) that plural numbers are represented by repetition; (4) that numerals are represented by dashes; (5) that hieroglyphics may read either from the right or from the left, but always from the direction in which the animals and human figures face; (6) that proper names are surrounded by a graven oval ring, making what he called a cartouche; (7) that the cartouches of the preserved portion of the Rosetta Stone stand for the name of Ptolemy alone; (8) that the presence of a female figure after such cartouches, in other inscriptions, always denotes the female sex; (9) that within the cartouches the hieroglyphic symbols have a positively phonetic value, either alphabetic or syllabic; and (10) that several different characters may have the same phonetic value.

Just what these phonetic values are, Doctor Young pointed out in the case of fourteen characters, representing nine sounds, six of which are accepted to-day as correctly representing the letters to which he ascribed them, and the three others as being correct regarding their essential or consonantal element. It is clear, therefore, that he was on the right track thus far, and on the very verge of complete discovery. But, unfortunately, he failed to take the next step, which would have been to realise that the same phonetic values given the alphabetic characters within the cartouches were often ascribed to them also when used in the general text of an inscription; in other words, that the use of an alphabet was not confined to proper names. This was the great secret which Young missed, but which his French successor, Jean Francois Champollion, working on the foundation that Young had laid, was enabled to ferret out.



Young's initial studies of the Rosetta Stone were made in 1814; his later publications bore date of 1819. Champollion's first announcement of results came in 1822; his second and more important one in 1824. By this time, through study of the cartouches of other inscriptions, he had made out almost the complete alphabet, and the "Riddle of the Sphinx" was practically solved. He proved that the Egyptians had developed a relatively complete alphabet (mostly neglecting the vowels, as early Semitic alphabets did also) centuries before the Phoenicians were heard of in history.

Even this statement, however, must in a measure be modified. These pictures are letters and something more. Some of them are purely alphabetical in character, and some are symbolic in another way. Some characters represent syllables. Others stand sometimes as mere representatives of sounds, and again, in a more extended sense, as representatives of things, such as all hieroglyphics doubtless were in the beginning. In a word, this is an alphabet, but not a perfected alphabet such as modern nations generally use.

The word "hieroglyphic" is applied, as we have seen, to various forms of picture writing; but the original interpretation which the Greeks, who invented it, put upon the word was the "holy writing" of the Egyptians. The earliest Greek travellers who went to Egypt, when that country was finally opened up to the outside world, must have noticed the strange picture scrolls everywhere to be seen there on the temple walls, on obelisks, on statues, and mummy-cases, as well as on papyrus rolls, which were obviously intended to serve the purpose of handing down records of events to future generations.

It is now known that this writing of the Egyptians was of a most extraordinary compound character. Part of its pictures are used as direct representations of the objects presented. Here are some examples:



Again the picture of an object becomes an ideograph, as in the following instances:

Here the sacred ibis or the sacred bull symbolises the soul. The bee stands for honey, the eyes for the verb "to see." Yet again these pictures may stand neither as pictures of things nor as ideographs, but as having the phonetic value of a syllable. Such syllabic signs may be used either singly, as above, or in combination, as illustrated below.