British political ambitions 149 A region where cotton is grown in America and owned by a single company. As for the dam, it is a solid structure of granite (flint stone) extracted from the nearby Al-Hajir Al-Mubawara for Al-Sijada, and it is founded on an area of shining rock protruding into the river at this point. The amount estimated to be used in the construction of this dam is about 150,408,000 cubic feet of stone and one hundred thousand tons of Portland cement. The dam's length is approximately two miles and its average height is ninety feet. It will have eighty large openings, each 27 feet high and seven feet wide, and fourteen gates to regulate the canal water, each 17 feet high and ten feet wide, or slightly more, and 1126 outlets. Approximately 300 tons of iron manufactures will be used in the openings and their associated machinery, supplied by the English company Ransomes and Rapier in Ipswich. The cement is made there from materials abundantly available in the surrounding lands. A state-of-the-art factory was established, equipped with permanent kilns and grinders, producing about one hundred tons of cement daily, no less in quality than cement made in England. A small island that emerged from a small shoal in the river greatly assisted in the construction of the dam. It facilitated the diversion of the watercourse, a necessary task for laying the dam's foundation in the river. The foundations were laid on the western side, and the watercourse was diverted towards them. Then, temporary clay dams were erected to connect the northern tip of the island to its southern tip and to the eastern bank, and the permanent dam began to rise in the main channel. The foundational parts of the dam appeared on dry land, while the section on the western bank was completed.