CHAPTER XVI THE NILE IN HARNESS WITHIN a mile or so of the red granite quarries, out of which Pompey’s Pillar and the obelisks were taken by the an¬ cient Egyptians, just below the island of Philae, with its stone temples built ages ago to the Goddess Isis, far up the Nile valley, on the edge of Lower Nubia, I write these notes for my American readers. I am in the heart of the desert, seven hundred miles south of the Mediterranean Sea, at the point where the great river drops down over the first cataract. I have come here to describe the Aswan Dam, which the British built to harness the Nile and thereby save Egypt from famine.

We all look upon this as the oldest of rivers, but the Nile god of to-day has many new aspects. For ages he has been ramping and charging at his own sweet will, but he is now being harnessed and will have to work in the traces like an old plough mule. In the past he has been feeding his daughter Egypt or not, as he pleased. He has sometimes stuffed her to repletion, and at others has held back his supplies of water and mud, causing a famine.

This was the case during the seven hungry years of Joseph’s time, and the fat years of that day were un¬ doubtedly produced by high Niles. Such ups and downs have occurred in Egypt from time to time since the dawn 128