3-086-122 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Barrage of the Nile, 1898. '1. Taking Sleepers to the New Railway. 2. Conveying Limestone from Assouan Quarries. 3. Loading Boats at Lehawa Quarries. 4. Towing Cargoes. 5. Kasr-el-Ibrim, South of the First Cataract, showing Level of Water when Dam is completed. 6. Site of the Barrage looking East, a little South of Assiout. 7. Loading Camels with Limestone at the Assiout Quarries. 8. Mr. W. Willcocks, late Director-General of Reservoirs, Egypt. From Photographs and Sketches supplied by Sir Benjamin Baker. The Egyptian Government has now contracted with Messrs. John Aird and Company to carry out the necessary barrage of the Nile at Assouan and Assiout within the next five years. The construction of the great dam projected will be an engineering feat of unique character. It is to be built straight across the river at the head of the Assouan cataract, measuring close upon a mile and a quarter from bank to bank...Another barrage will afford further control of the waters at Assiout, so that a reserve supply of water for Middle Egypt can be thence obtained in time of drought without the ten or more days' delay that would occur before even the great volume of water that could be released at Assouan would benefit the middle territory.' From "Illustrated London News", 1898.