Engineering Wonders of the World
Volume I

THE NILE DAMS AND THE ASSOUAN RESERVOIR. 389 Fig. 4.—PRIMITIVE IRRIGATION APPLIANCES. gravitation on to the fields during the summer, artificial means have to be adopted. There are four methods commonly employed, apart from the modern steam pump—namely, the Shadoof, Sakieh, Taboot, and Natala. The Shadoof (Fig. 4) has remained in common use for thirty centuries. A long spar is so pivoted on a cross beam, Primitive suitably supported, as to allow Irrigation . Appliances. “ to swm« UP and down- From the top or smaller end of the spar depends a thin pole with a bucket attached, balanced by a mass of dried mud stuck on the thick end. Th© worker pulls on the pole, dips the bucket in the water at the low level, allows the mud counter-weight to lift it, and empties the contents into the higher waterway. The Sakieh consists of a large wooden wheel turned by cattle. It operates an endless rope strung with earthen- ware pots which raise the water—sometimes a distance of twenty feet—and discharge it into a prepared channel. The Taboot is a lighter kind of wooden wheel also turned by cattle power. In this case the rim of the wheel is hollow, and divided into numerous compart- ments which take up the water and spill it out again in due course. The Taboot is used in the lower Delta, where only a slight differ- ence in level has to be overcome. The most primitive and least used of the water-lifting devices is the Natala, a shallow bucket slung on four ropes and worked by two men. Cotton is the most important crop grown in Egypt, and the fineness of the quality of Egyptian cotton, it has been declared with little exaggeration, built the first barrage across the river Delta -XT-! -n • > . Barrage. JNile. ±or, in order to increase the cotton crop in Lower Egypt, where the natural slope of the land is much less than it is in Upper Egypt, it became necessary to maintain the water supply at a suitable level in these summer canals. It was to achieve this that the Delta Barrage was built. The importance of the Delta Barrage is beyond question ; it is the key to the richest, the most fertile province in Egypt. The first proposal, made by Linant de Bell- fonds, a French engineer, was for a barrage across the two branches of the Nile. Mo- hammed Ali adopted the proposal enthusias- tically, and in 1833 a host of corvée or pressed labourers was set to work upon it. In 1835,