December 10, 1902, was the official date of the inauguration of the Reservoir, a memorable day in the history of Egypt, and worthy to be marked with red even in the unchanging Mohammedan calendar.

The making of the Dam has been a great time for Assouan. The town has thriven and prospered beyond all knowledge since the days—not so very long ago—when two British battalions occupied the barracks on the hill overlooking the river to the south. The barracks are crumbling to pieces now, and only one or two blockhouses remain as memorials of the past state of siege and fear of dervish raids. The tide of war has rolled far away and spent itself utterly in remote corners. The whole of the Soudan lies between Assouan and the frontier of any possible enemy. Even the yellow fort is untenanted save by a few policemen. True, for four years an army of 10,000 men has been marshalled here, but it was an invasion of the arts of peace, creative and not destructive. Possibly the inhabitants would have liked their occupation to go on for ever; but even the best of times must have an end, and it was a good occasion for a holiday. In every Nile village flags and bunting were flying. For once the fields were deserted, and everywhere the people crowded to the bank in the hope of catching a glimpse of the Khedive and his distinguished guests. Here and there the gaffirs, or local policemen, lined the shore, standing stiffly to attention, or saluting with their Remingtons in the regulation attitude of European soldiers, which contrasted quaintly with their loose, flowing robes and white turbans.

At Assouan the faithful subjects of the Khedive surpassed themselves. Sunny Assouan lends itself readily to a festal garb. Situated where the Nile broadens out after emerging from the rocky defile of the cataract, the town has a most picturesque aspect at all times; its embanked river-front makes it the neatest of all the cities of Upper Egypt. Elephantine and the Sirdar’s Island rise green and smiling out of the broad bosom of the river; the perpetual blue sky makes everything doubly attractive to the Northern visitor. Dressed for the festival, it was a charming scene. Triumphal arches of the sacred yellow and brown, gorgeous hangings and many-coloured festoons, bore testimony to the Oriental love of vivid hues; steamers and dahabiehs, moored in line along the shore as well as along Elephantine Island, vied with each other in their decorations, and numerous feluccas were plying to and fro, half hidden by their burdens of flags and palm-leaves. At night thousands of lamps decorated shore and river alike, and the whole scene resembled nothing so much as a Henley in Regatta Week, with its illuminations unrestrained by doubts of weather. To the ear, however, the voices of the night told a very different tale. The crooning song of the Nubian boatmen, ‘Great is the Prophet, praise be to him!’ accompanying the creaking of their clumsy oars with monotonous persistency, sounded weird and barbaric over the twinkling waters. The bustle in the town, too, was no mere ordinary festal murmur; for this was the month of Ramadan, and the feast of lamps meant a great deal to all faithful Moslems. All day long they have abstained from food or drink, and the going down of the sun is keenly welcomed as the end of one day more of fasting.

The secret of the prosperity of Assouan lies in its granite. It is the granite bed of the river at this point that makes the Reservoir possible; here are the granite quarries from which the Dam was built, and from which every ruler of Egypt who wished to raise a monument for all time has drawn his supplies. Nothing that I have seen in this country brings the past so near as these quarries. Here lies a rough-hewn obelisk, just ready to be rolled away; here an enormous block of stone half hollowed into a bath for an Emperor, or a sarcophagus for an Apis bull, designed by some mighty ruler who ‘thought in continents,’ and recked little of the lives and labours of thousands provided he gratified his whim. But suddenly death or some other fate intervened, and a feebler or more merciful generation has never taken up the work. You may see the marks of the wedges on some great face of rock, as fresh as if it was only yesterday that Pharaoh’s workmen had driven them in and poured water on the wood till it swelled and burst the stone; down below is the fallen piece still waiting for the mason who never came back to it. Perhaps some of the very stones cut by Cheops or Rameses have been smoothed and planed and set in the Great Dam.

Passing along the raised causeway, down which so many great monuments have been rolled slowly to the river, I came through a long stretch of burning desert to a spur on the northern extremity of the granite hills. Here, unexpectedly, I found myself overlooking the lake formed by the filling of the Reservoir. Graceful lines of palm-trees showed where the banks of the river had once been. Philæ was but an insignificant speck on the blue waters, overpowered by the fantastic piles of granite boulders that hem in the valley. In the far distance rose some lofty hills, crowned by dazzling sand that might easily have been mistaken for snow. The Dam builders have been accused of vandalism, but they have created a standing pool in the wilderness of surpassing beauty. The view of the lake was not the only attraction of the spot; at my feet lay a colossal statue of Osiris, destined for some temple, but never moved from the spot where it was hewn.

Ancient Egypt may well look on with scornful wonder at our pride in our achievements. The Great Pyramid at Gizeh contains three times as much solid masonry as the Dam, cut from these same quarries. Every one of those huge blocks had to be dragged to the river, and carried down 600 miles, before it was hoisted into its place. As an achievement of mechanical power the Great Dam cannot compare with the Great Pyramid; but when at last I climbed a little hill hard by the river, below the Reservoir itself, and saw the whole length of the great stone rampart, stretching right across the valley, the contrast between the world of Pharaoh and our own came strong upon me.

Pharaoh, to whom time and life were nothing, out of the misery of the forced labour of his subjects, raised a perfectly useless monument of his own folly; yet he achieved his object, and made his tomb one of the wonders of the world. We, with the free labour of voluntary workers—paid, fed, and cared for, instead of being driven by the whip—have dared to harness Nile himself. It is a work vital to the interests of millions of dwellers by the river. Yet who can say that the fame of the Pyramid will not endure the longer? Hundreds of years after the time of Cheops a mighty Dam was built in Southern Arabia for a like purpose of irrigation; it lasted for eight centuries or more, and its bursting in 100 A.D. is mentioned in the Koran. Its ruins remain to this day, and show that it was larger than the Nile Dam. Eight hundred years is a long life for a reservoir, but if this one lasts a quarter of that period it will have repaid its cost many hundred times over.

Certainly it looks strong enough to last as long as the Nile itself. Strength, and nothing but strength, shows in every stone of it. Square, solid, and massive, it runs from shore to shore in an absolutely straight line, without the slightest attempt at any trace of ornament or decoration. Clearly, effect has been the last thing thought of. Even the sluice-gates have absolutely plain rectangular openings, and it detracts from the symmetry of the design that, owing to engineering exigencies, they are not all of one height, but run in sections of five, some of them lower than others. The top of the wall runs in a simple, unbroken level; there is nothing to catch the eye as it travels up the steep face of masonry except the slightest change in the angle of the slope to a nearly complete perpendicular. The wall simply leaves off because its builders thought it high enough for the present. Along the broad surface of the summit runs a tramway, with plenty of room for a man to walk on either side, flanked by perfectly plain, solid parapets as high as the waist, and more than a yard thick, of a piece with the masonry below.

On the eastern side the Dam is unostentatiously built into the living rocks; no arch or pylon marks its start. On the western side it is flanked by a ladder of four immense locks, set in a mountainous embankment. The gallows-like arms of the draw-bridge, hideous in appearance, but a marvel of mechanical ingenuity, over the upper gate of the highest lock are the only break in the long, unrelieved level. The hard gray colour of the granite strengthens the general impression, though in time every part exposed to the action of the water will be coated with the shining black varnish which the Nile mud always lays on granite, and it will look exactly the same as the natural bed of the stream.

How different all this is from the prettiness of the Delta Barrage, with its brickwork, originally designed and built under French influence, adorned with archways and towers, of which the lovely garden, with its flowers and shrubs, its green lawns and leafy trees, on the tongue of land which it crosses, seems a natural and appropriate part! The Assouan Dam is the work of a practical, unimaginative race. Its builders have had before them the problem of harnessing the great river with a yoke that cannot be broken; they had to hold up a reservoir containing 100,000,000 tons of water, so that for 140 miles the river is turned back upon itself; and they have succeeded.

In December all but a few of the sluice-gates are shut, for the reservoir has to be filled. But imagine it at the height of the flood, when the collected rainfall of half a continent is crashing past at the rate of nearly 1,000,000 tons a minute, and through each of the 180 openings shoots a solid cube of dark water to dash thundering in clouds of white foam on the rocks below, and rush tumultuously down the swirling slopes of the cataract. Think of the huge bulk of water held up when the reservoir is full. Then you will understand something of the difficulties of the work. Solidity and strength could not but be the first and overpowering idea in the minds of the builders. The longer you look, the more you are impressed. The vast dimensions of the Dam grow upon you from moment to moment. There is, after all, a fierce beauty in those uncompromising features, grimly set in the determination to hold the river in bondage. The massive structure is in harmony with the forces of Nature. Feeble and puny it may be compared with even the least of their handiwork, but it is impossible not to feel that its builders have been inspired with a spark of the same creative power. They drew their plans, and dug and built and strove their best to control the great river. They have succeeded because a portion of that spirit of Nature against which they struggled has passed into their work.

Is it too much to hope that a scheme of decoration may yet be found in consonance with these ideas? Some day the Dam will be raised to the full height of the original design, thus doubling the present capacity of the Reservoir. Then will be the time to finish the work magnificently, and make of it a stately monument, to be the glory of Egypt as well as the foundation of her material prosperity. The subject is worthy of a great artist. Only a scheme conceived on grand lines, perfectly simple and bold, can have the least chance of success. Anything else would be as ridiculous as a proposal to place a statue of ordinary dimensions on the top of the Great Pyramid. The difficulties are great, and so would be the expense, so great, indeed, that it would be far better to avoid any attempt at decoration, unless the results are to be admirable beyond all question. Are there no possible successors to the architects of Karnak?

The ceremony of inauguration was, like the masonry of the Dam itself, sensible and solid, but it was not impressive. Those who arranged its details had forgotten the vastness of the theatre in which it was performed. From the purely spectacular point of view it was a failure. Egypt has no money yet to spend on functions. Perhaps a better stage management might have made a better display without any greater expense. The material benefits of English rule would be appreciated none the less gratefully for a little gilding. But the Englishman in Egypt has had other things to think about than the organization of what the native would call ‘fantasias.’ So he fell back on the established custom of his own country. Wherever he goes he carries with him law and order and equity and righteousness and commonsense, and he also carries a peculiar kind of public ceremonial routine. Everybody knows it. The invited guests arrive in special trains, and perspire in top-hats and frock-coats for an interminable time, until Royalty arrives full of gracious smiles amid a cheering crowd. The distinguished persons pass into a pen carpeted with red baize, where all the notables are assembled. Somebody makes a perfectly inaudible speech, which receives a gracious and inaudible reply. A button is pressed here, a lever turned there, and several extraordinary things begin to happen in consequence. Then a number of good men and true receive some well-earned decorations, Royalty graciously departs, and everybody presses home as best he can, while the band plays the National Anthem. The whole is accompanied by the clicking of innumerable cameras, and nobody quite realizes the importance of the occasion until he reads about it afterwards. At the Nile Reservoir all this happened in due order with the necessary local variations. The officials wore red tarbushes instead of top-hats, and every sensible person carried a cotton umbrella over his head.

But apart from the ceremonial, the scene was deeply interesting. If the day’s routine was insignificant, it was because the overpowering presence of the Dam itself dwarfed every other presence. And the names of those assembled there recalled vividly the thrilling history of Egypt during the last twenty years. There were statesmen and diplomatists, soldiers and engineers, men of business and men of letters, all of whom, in some field or other, had done their part in building up the fallen country. Some, too, were there who, submitting contentedly before the logic of accomplished facts, burying old rivalries and animosities, had come in no unfriendly spirit to witness the realization of much that it had once been their policy to hinder. But if all the rest had been absent, the presence of one man, the Chief, whose wise counsel and guiding hand had been everywhere, would have been sufficient to represent all that these twenty years have meant to Egypt. Well might Lord Cromer and the irrigation engineers review their work with satisfaction. To them the Reservoir means the successful culmination of a great policy long and steadily pursued, nothing less than the establishment of the prosperity of Egypt upon a sure and certain basis: for that is what the regulation of the Nile involves. In Egypt, at any rate, they require no formal monument. Their praise stands clearly writ on the face of every cultivated field throughout the country.

At the inauguration of the Nile Reservoir at Assouan, it was an Egyptian Minister of Public Works who read an Arabic speech congratulating the Khedive on the completion of the great work which is to make his name famous among the rulers of Egypt. Among all the flags that decorated the town and the craft on the river, the most infrequent was that of England. A casual observer, knowing nothing of the country, might easily have overlooked the number of Englishmen wearing the tarbush, that red badge of Egyptian officialdom, and gone away thinking that even the presence of the brother of the King of England marked nothing but a compliment paid by one great Power to another. He might well have been astonished to be told that the Dam, which will confirm and increase the prosperity of Egypt, is no less an evidence of the stability of British rule. It is just possible that immediately after our first occupation we might have been able to evacuate the country—not, indeed, without danger to our hold upon the highroad to India, or without detriment to the true interests of Egypt, but at least without loss of honour to ourselves. Since then, in spite of the efforts of our statesmen at home, it has become more and more impossible.

Among the guests at Assouan there might have been seen a quiet-looking old gentleman, with a gray beard and bushy whiskers, beaming benevolently through gold-rimmed spectacles. His figure was that of a man, once sturdy and square-set, over whose head had passed years of ease and good living. At the first glance, in his frock-coat and tarbush, he looked like any other comfortable Turkish gentleman. Yet there was no one present with a more interesting past than he. For this was Mukhtar Pasha, who bears the proud title of Ghazi, ‘the victorious,’ the hero of the Caucasus in the Russo-Turkish War. He came to Egypt in 1887 as special Turkish Commissioner, to arrange for the British evacuation under the Drummond-Wolff Convention. It is well known how France and Russia at the last moment intervened to prevent Turkey from ratifying the agreement. A special Providence guards the British Empire against the efforts of its rulers. But Mukhtar remains as Turkish Commissioner in Egypt without duties, and probably without pay, a reminder of past eccentricities of British policy.

We have travelled far from the days when it was seriously proposed by Conservative statesmen to make Turkey responsible for civilization and good government in Egypt. To-day no one in his senses could wish to put an end to British rule. Let a man start from Assouan and survey the great series of irrigation works—the Reservoir, the Assiout Barrage, the Regulator of the Ibrahimiyah Canal, the Koshesha Regulator, the Barrages and Weirs at the point of the Delta and at Zifta; let him examine the intricate system of canals, siphons, wheels, drains, dykes, and sluices, by which the water is distributed over the cultivated lands, and let him reflect on what would happen if all this were left in Egyptian hands. Inevitably, sooner or later, the whole thing would come to ruin, and the greater the height of prosperity to which the country has attained under the system of perennial irrigation, the greater would be its fall. Egypt has been called the classic land of baksheesh, and it will not lose its character in a generation or two. Imagine a Government in need of money; what better thumbscrew could an Oriental despot wish for than the command of the water-supply? When a land-owner knew that he could be ruined by the shutting of a sluice-gate, he would pay anything without a struggle. The golden goose would be killed in every direction. Even under a well-intentioned Government it would only be regarded as natural for a local official to make free use of such unrivalled opportunities to supplement his pay. Corruption is not a vice in Oriental eyes; it is the habit of centuries. That is why, with every extension of scientific irrigation, the need for European supervision becomes greater, and since we can allow no Power but ourselves to hold Egypt, European means British.

An amusing instance of the native way of looking at such matters occurred in connection with the making of the Reservoir. A certain sum was allotted for the compensation of those who would be flooded out of house and home. Some of the Assouan people saw their chance. It does not take much to build a native house. In a short time the Government inspectors had the pleasure of being shown a number of brand-new buildings on the foreshore, with the whitewash still wet upon them. Great was the disappointment of these ingenious speculators. In another case a man was building a boat; he was repeatedly warned to move his work, but would not. Only when the water began actually to rise did he become seriously alarmed, and sent down a letter of remonstrance. Again the position was explained to him; but again he advanced his request that the gates might be opened, accompanied with a hint that he might be willing to make some small acknowledgment of his obligation. Realizing at last the futility of his demand, he exclaimed in despair, ‘What is the use of your Dam if you cannot let the water out to save my boat?’

The two great principles of British policy in Egypt have been irrigation and low taxation. Irrigation is the vital necessity to Egypt. Other departments of Government, however urgent their claims might be, have had to wait and to be starved until the reproductive works could be established and set going. Every penny that could be spared had to be cast upon the waters. At the same time we found the people overburdened with taxation on account of the Public Debt, and also bound hand and foot in the meshes of the usurer. We could not, however powerful we might be, hope to hold securely a country with 11,000,000 of population, unless we have something else than mere force to look to. To the Egyptians we are aliens by race and religion, we have no ties of custom or intermarriage; we have nothing but their material interests to appeal to. If we can make them prosperous, if they can save money without fear of confiscation, if we can secure to them the fruits of their labour, we have done a great deal to strengthen the basis of our rule.

There is no doubt that the fellaheen do appreciate the benefits of British rule; it would be strange if they did not. The corvée is gone. Not only has taxation been enormously reduced in amount, but its method of collection has been made equitable and regular. Whereas in former days the tax-collector was in league with the money-lender, and contrived to demand his payments at times when it was certain that the cultivator of the soil would have no money, and would have to pledge his growing crops to raise the amount, now the time of payment is adjusted to suit the harvests. Moreover, the new Agricultural Bank lends to the fellaheen at a rate far below that demanded by the Syrian, Greek, or Coptic usurers; the State gives a small guarantee, and the Government tax-collectors collect the interest and instalments of the loans at the same time as the taxes. The Egyptians are naturally a thrifty people; they are taking advantage of this plan, and are very punctual in their repayments. When the scheme was first started, it was met with grave disapproval by the professed economists. The fellaheen, they said, will borrow first from the Bank, and will then execute a second mortgage, and borrow more on the same exorbitant terms from their old blood-suckers. But Lord Cromer’s keen insight into the character of the people has once again been justified.

It is true that a generation is growing up that knew not Ismail. These have lived only in the new order of things, and have no personal reminiscences to sharpen their enjoyment of the present; but even so the number of those actually discontented must be few, and the number of those who would carry their discontent into action still fewer. More than this, perhaps, it would be foolish to expect. In the East a reforming nation could not be really popular, except among fighters. And the Egyptians are no fighters—they are peaceable people, who love their homes; no one joins the army except by the necessity of conscription. Even the reformatory school-boy cannot be induced to volunteer for so much as the band. Honour and glory are nothing to them; they seek no bubble reputation at the cannon’s mouth. Again, the Englishman endeavours to establish impartial justice in the Courts. That is all very well if your opponent is a richer man than you; but what if you could have outbid him quite easily? It is a good thing to be free from the fear of being bastinadoed and fined because your neighbour has given false evidence against you, or because he has influence with the police. But if you, which is at least as likely, wish to do the same to him, how do you profit by the reform?

Then, too, the alien rule may be just and righteous and full of solid benefit, but it is dull. In old days a man might be maltreated and flogged, he might have his property confiscated, he might even lose his life, according to the whim of his ruler, but the same whim might equally make him Grand Vizier. Such fluctuations appeal to the Oriental imagination. A veiled Protectorate must always be something of a mystery to an Egyptian; the personal rule of a despot, Effendina, the Lord of all, is much more suited to his instincts. At any rate, it is difficult to discover much outward manifestation of an appreciation of British rule; but it would be wrong to argue too strongly from that. The fact is rather, indeed, a proof of the lightness of the governing hand. The Egyptians know very well that we shall never resent any opposition; they have confidence in our forbearance. But if time should bring a change once more—and there have been many changes in the past—it would be an evil day for those who had been too open in their support of English rule. It is well to be on the safe side.

If you take an intelligent and prosperous Egyptian, old enough to remember the days of Ismail—for example, a lawyer who has saved enough money to make a considerable investment in land, the prime ambition of every native, a man who speaks a couple of European languages, has had a good education himself, and is very likely sending his son to Oxford or Cambridge—and question him upon British rule in Egypt, he will probably tell you something as follows:—

‘No one who has eyes to see can question the benefit of the British occupation. The country has attained such prosperity as never before. We knew very well that no other European nation would have ruled us with such a single eye to the well-being of the natives. We realize the devotion and ability of the British officials. We would rather have you than any other rulers, and we are well aware that if you went we might easily become subject to a King Stork. In such a case your popularity would become enormous. Doubtless we should clamour for your return. But we cannot help dreaming of the glories that might have been ours if our Khedives had not wasted their chances. Who can say how great an African empire might have existed? Long before European nations began to take a hand in the partition of Africa, we held the whole valley of the Nile to Uganda. With a wise Government and such a starting-point, what limits could have been set to our dominions? By the folly of our rulers we squandered it all, and came to ruin. You have drawn us out of the pit, but you thrust your benefits upon us at the point of the bayonet. In spite of them, and perhaps unreasonably, we sigh for rulers of our own faith and race, and we would sacrifice something of our prosperity if we could feel ourselves the authors of what remained.’

Such longings are natural and creditable, and if the men who feel them were capable or numerous enough to form a real governing class, the prospects of the future might be different from what they are. But they are not; and these dreams must remain dreams—for some time to come, at any rate. Such discontents are the inevitable outcome of the progress of our educative work in Egypt. Nothing illustrates it better than the recent movement among the Egyptian officers of some of the Soudanese battalions. These men had been trained on a British model; they had gained much experience in the stern school of actual warfare, and yet they found the higher ranks of the Service barred to them, and filled by a succession of British officers, younger and less experienced than themselves. Their discontent was natural, but their disappointment was also inevitable. In spite of their training and experience, to have given them the promotion they wished for would have been to ruin the efficiency of the army. You cannot make bricks without straw, however scientific your methods.

It would be very easy to exaggerate the importance of such murmurings. They are as nothing in the face of the rising tide of prosperity which has come to the mass of the labouring population as the result of our rule, and which is its overwhelming justification. In the Delta provinces, in Middle and Upper Egypt, in the Fayoum, the undeniable facts rise up and confront you. Wages have increased in some places as much as 50 per cent., and with the rise has gone an enormous improvement in all the conditions of life. The fellaheen are building better houses, they are better fed, disease is less, they are happier every way. And as labourers they well deserve it. Many faults they have, but nowhere in the world can a more industrious, patient, and hard-working people be found.

In the Mosque el Azhar, the Mohammedan University of Cairo, the interpretation of the Koran is the principal subject of study, and it is said that weeks and months, and even years, are spent by professors and pupils in subtle and ingenious dissertations on such a question as, Who is your neighbour? Is a man living over your head more worthy of the name than one who lives next door? And so on. If in these reforming days these pundits turn their attention to politics, they will find an almost equally insoluble problem in attempting to define the exact nature of British rule in Egypt. To them the question may safely be left. But while the learned few are labouring through its intricate maze with the most agreeable lack of success, the unlearned many will have their own simple answer. They only know the thing was done; it matters nothing by what authority. The water came to them regularly in due season, and the wilderness was made to blossom like the rose.

The completion of one programme by the construction of the Reservoir and the works dependent upon it does not mean stagnation. Irrigation is an ever-growing and ever-living science. There can be no standing still. Even in the ordinary routine there are thousands of details always pressing forward for fresh consideration. It takes but a few years for a daring innovation to become old-fashioned. The system of perennial irrigation in Egypt is so young that there is still much to be learnt. It means a totally new style of agriculture. Nothing but constant experiment and constant watchfulness will enable the engineers to distribute the water to the best advantage. The best methods of reclaiming new land, and of preventing the deterioration of the old, the maintenance and improvement of existing locks, weirs, regulators, barrages, and other masonry, the care of canals and drains—these and an infinity of other matters fill the life of the irrigation engineer, so that, always interesting, it is also at times even exciting. Decisions of great and immediate importance have to be constantly and promptly taken. Their duty touches very nearly the lives of all who dwell and labour within their districts. There can be no question of any folding of the hands to slumber. But beyond all this, it is the peculiar good fortune of those whose care is the water-supply of Egypt that they have to travel in thought or in fact over half a great continent, and discuss schemes of a magnitude and extent enough to stagger the imagination of the boldest dreamer. The Anglo-Egyptian army at Omdurman opened an entirely new chapter in the history of the control of the Nile.