Engineering Wonders of the World
Volume I

404 ENGINEERING WONDERS OF THE WORLD. Fig. 25.—DRIVING IRON PILING AT THE ESNEH BARRAGE WORKS. (Photo, Sir John Aird and Co.) were filled with grout forced in through holes drilled through, the floor. No further difficul- ties occurred, and by the close of the season all the piers had been carried up to their full height, and the greater part of the roadway and parapet had been built. The sluices were put in place and the whole structure completed in the fourth season. It was first, actually used in the same year (1902). Like the Assouan Dam, the barrage had been built in less than four and a half years. Midway between Cairo and the Mediterranean Sea, the Zifta Barrage crosses the Damietta branch of the Nile. This barrage, completed early in 1903, is in style, prin- Zifta Barrage. n , , , . , ciple, and all else but size, tne counterpart of the Assiout Barrage. It is built of brick and stone,* has fifty sluice open- ings—less than half the number in the Assiout * The work was carried out by the Egyptian Government. Barrage—and is devised to make use of the first of the flood waters passed by the Delta Barrage, and to hold up the river level 4 metres (13 feet). It feeds the Ryah Abbas, or new canal constructed during the reign of the pres- ent Khedive. The Esneh Barrage was opened as recently as the 9th of February 1909 by the Khedive, and on this occasion, in pursuance of a pleasant fancy, he used a key shaped like the ancient Dad, symbo- lizing “ firmness, stability, preservation.” It lies 110 miles of the Assouan Dam, between Assiout Barrage, and it is capable of holding up the river level 10 feet. In construction it reproduces the type employed in the Assiout and Zifta Barrages, and in addition, Mr. A. L. Webb, Under-Secretary of State for Irrigation in Egypt, who is responsible for Esneh Barrage. to the north it and the