Egypt and the Christian crusade . metimes recovering its losses for afew days, but soon the decrease is rapid. InJanuary, February and March the fields gradu-ally become dry. In explaining this l^ile flood in Egypt, wemust look not to the headwaters of the WhiteNile, but to those torrential tributaries whichhave their source in the Abyssinian mountains,the Sobat and particularly the Blue Nile. Therains of Abyssinia transform the Sobat andespecially the Blue Nile into swollen, rushing,watercourses of a reddish hue, and it is thisred deposit, swept down from the Abyssinianmountains, that enriche
Egypt and the Christian crusade . metimes recovering its losses for afew days, but soon the decrease is rapid. InJanuary, February and March the fields gradu-ally become dry. In explaining this l^ile flood in Egypt, wemust look not to the headwaters of the WhiteNile, but to those torrential tributaries whichhave their source in the Abyssinian mountains,the Sobat and particularly the Blue Nile. Therains of Abyssinia transform the Sobat andespecially the Blue Nile into swollen, rushing,watercourses of a reddish hue, and it is thisred deposit, swept down from the Abyssinianmountains, that enriches the fields of Egypt. But for the skill of the engineer and thescience of irrigation, this Nile flood would min-ister, and that often in an uncontrolled anddisastrous way, only to those lands whose lowlevel brought them within natural reach of theoverflowing waters. To-day, however, irrigationworks—the great dam as Assuan, which createsa mighty reservoir banking up the waters for150 miles., the dam at Assiut, the great Barrage. o I—( HW gE-i GQCO<1 The Country 19 below Cairo, and the vast network of canalswhich belong to these several constructions—all make the cultivable land of Egypt less andless subject to the eccentric extremes of a Nileflood. The water is thus more effectively dis-tributed and stored up against future need. The ivhole land is divided, for purposes ofirrigation, into large basins. These are floodedunder the direction of skilled engineers, and thewater is allowed to stand until the soil has be-come sufficiently saturated and a considerablequantity of the deposit has settled. The wateris then drained off into the canals or into lowerbasins. During the season when the land isthus flooded the country presents an unusual ap-pearance. The villages are at times entirely cutoff from each other, save by boats, or else con-nected only by some high embankment whichserves the double purpose of holding in thewaters and of serving as a public highway. TheDelta
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