CAUSED BY THE FAILURE OF THE WATER SUPPLY windows and wired glass will at once possess the equivalent of substantial fire walls, thus protecting each of the four centres one against the other. Buildings in each section may protect themselves one against the other by the same inexpensive yet strategic procedure. Wired glass, it has been repeatedly proven, withstands the hottest fire. By following this plan much will be done to eliminate the conflagration hazard of the cities. Wired glass not only keeps fires out but it keeps them in, and fires. can thus be made unit fires, to be held in check until extinguished by the firemen. A DANGEROUS FIRE IN DULUTH HERE ILLUSTRATED BY THE DEVASTATION OF CHELSEA, MASS. A THE ASSUAN DAM MIGHTY STRUCTURE THAT ADDS MILLIONS OF ACRES TO THE ARABLE LAND OF EGYPT B BY M. E. J. CZARNOMSKA Y SHAPE and conditions, Egypt offered herself to not only the most compact system of irrigation in the world, but the most spectacular. As the Great Assuan Dam now stands completed, one must recognize that she has achieved it. It stirs imagination, even emotion. The dam that stores the water, the barrages that distribute it,, the lesser weirs and sluices of the large canals with their off shoots that traverse the provinces - all are on an enormous scale, one great work to water a valley to feed a nation. Three miles above Assuan the Great Dam stretches a mile and a quarter from bank to bank across the Nile. The brown This year's flood is over. water has rushed through to spread upon and fertilize the fields. Now the sluices are closed, and the gigantic bulwark, apparently a solid mass, towers nearly 80 feet above the river. Behind it the lakeIII miles long when first formed ten years ago, now to be extended by 40 miles - is filling. It will store 2,000,000,000 tons of water for use next spring. The overplus will escape by the navigation channel till the gradual opening of the sluices in the dry season. Three magnificent barrages: at Esneh, 100 miles north of Assuan; at Assiout, 275 miles farther north; and a third, 260 miles farther still and twelve below Cairo AN EGYPTIAN IRRIGATION DYKE BROKEN TO LET THE WATER THROUGH TO A LOWER LEVEL AFTER THE UPLAND HAS BEEN IRRIGATED (where the Nile divides to cross the Delta) will distribute this water as it issues from the dam by holding it back till the canals of the provinces are filled. The vast structures, massive, simple, built solely to sustain the pressure upon them, accord wonderfully with the sober external aspect of the temples that neighbor them. With the first opening of the dam in December, 1902, science took under absolute control the THE SLUICES OPENED AT ASSUAN prosperity" of Egypt. In no other country do these depend upon a single agent. In Egypt, the Nile alone sustains the land it has created. The White Nile, the outlet of Lakes Albert and Victoria, after a tumultuous course near the equator, filters lazily for six hundred miles through the reeds and grasses of broad swamps, with the slightest slope a river can have. It comes to Khartoum free of silt, with the milky "life, strength, and TO RELEASE EXCESS WATER FROM THE RESERVOIR ABOVE tinge that gives it its INCREASING THE HEIGHT OF THE ASSUAN DAM BY 16 FEET TO ENLARGE THE ALREADY IMMENSE RESERVOIR SO THAT IT WILL HENCEFORTH CONTAIN 2 BILLION TONS OF WATER, MAKING A LAKE 151 MILES LONG THE ANCIENT WATER-GAUGE OF THE NILE A GLIMPSE OF THE MODERN WHICH WILL BE VASTLY EXTENDED BY THE NEW ENLARGED ASSUAN DAM, UNDER THE name. Here it is dammed back for several months by the rush of the Blue Nile, and forms a vast reservoir. Not until October, when the force of the Blue Nile is spent do its resources come into play. Thenceforward till the next flood, its full and constant flow alone makes Egypt habitable. But the ancient system of irrigation, that had worked well under a despotism with serf-labor, could not meet the demands of modern industries, nor enable Egypt to compete with western nations. Mohammed Ali, the ambitious pasha of Egypt from 1803 to 1848, tried to introduce scientific irrigation; but the barrage he built below Cairo soon cracked from the foundation up and was abandoned. His grandson, Ismail, introduced the raising of sugar-cane, which requires much water. He provided for it in the old way by cutting another big canal, which was soon clogged and could only be cleared at enormous expense, or by forced labor. In 1882, however, England took the responsibility for the future solvency of Egypt. Her first care was the watersupply. By 1890, Mohammed's barrage was repaired and in use, and much of the old "basin irrigation" modernized. It EGYPTIAN IRRIGATION SYSTEM STORES OF WATER THAT WILL BE HELD BY THE SHADOW OF THE PYRAMID AT THE LEFT was soon evident that enormous power was going to waste for lack of a reservoir to store the water that ran fruitlessly into the sea by millions of tons per hour in winter, leaving the land to gasp for it in summer. Therefore a dam was planned, and at the same time a second barrage at Assiout to provide for Ismail's ill-starred canals cheme. The building of the barrage was comparatively simple, but that of the dam presented enormous difficulties. From December to June the river divides at Assuan into five channels. The masonry in each was built up separately in the successive dry seasons by a force of from 11,000 to 13,000 men. The difficulty lay in the building of the preliminary construction-dams. Even the reduced current tossed a 5-ton block along as if it were a football, broke through the temporary dams and carried away the car tracks, steam-cranes, and car-loads of stone upon them. Still, in spite of drawbacks, the dam was finished within contract-time. Its storage capacity of 1,000,000,000 cubic metres (tons) provided fully not only for the valley and the Delta, but for the irrigation of 420,000 acres south of the dam, hitherto barren. AN OLD METHOD OF IRRIGATION |