THE NILE IN HARNESS slide up and down inside the wall on rollers. Upon the top of the dam there are machines for moving these gates, so made that a child could operate them. They are equipped to be operated by electricity, but they are now worked by hand, and this mighty force, so tremendous that two billion horses would be required to move it, is now controlled at will by the muscular power of a single man.

This thought was impressive as I sat below the dam, where the eight central sluices pressed by the millions of tons of water lying behind them poured forth their mighty flood. I had climbed down the steps at the north side of the centre of the dam to make a photograph of the streams flowing through. They come forth with a rush like that of Niagara and go foaming over the rocks with a force that might generate thousands of horsepower. The noise is like thunder and the torrents fairly shake the earth. Each is about fifteen feet in height and yellow with mud. There were eight such streams of golden foam at my right, and farther over I could see the spray from others all dash¬ ing through the dam until they met in a yellow frothing mass several hundred feet below me and rolled onward down the rocks to Egypt. They flow out with such a force that they tear up the rocky bed of the Nile, lifting stones weighing many tons and carrying them some dis¬ tance down the river. They have done so much damage of this nature that a cement foundation has now been made below the dam itself in order to prevent the gouging out of the bed which would mean the undermining of the main structure.

But the thirsty land and its teeming millions forever clamour for more water. Even this great Aswan Dam has not nearly solved the irrigation problem of Egypt. There 135