water at our disposal when we had profitably used all that we already had, and while mighty volumes were daily flowing out to the sea, it could not be said that we were doing that. The first great work to be studied was the Barrage. We were warned on all sides to have nothing to say to it, as it was thoroughly unsound; but we felt sure we must either make it sound or build an entirely new one, and we resolved on the former. The work had failed because it was faulty in design, the floorings and foundations not being sufficiently massive, and faulty in execution from the dishonest use of bad materials and from bad workmanship. The bed of the river consists of nothing more stable than sand and alluvial mud for at least 200 feet deep. It was out of the question to think of getting down to solid rock. It was not, as we thought, very safe to excavate very deeply close to the existing works, so we decided not to try it, but merely to strengthen and consolidate the foundations, built as they were on sand. I have said that the work consisted of two great bridges over the two branches of the river. We could not shut up either branch entirely; but we decided to strengthen and complete one-half of each bridge each season, which meant four seasons' work. While the river was still in considerable flood each November, we began to throw out great embankments of earth about 200 feet from the bridge; one up-stream, the other down-stream of it, beginning at the short end, and ultimately enclosing one-half of the river as in a pond. This used to take three months' hard work. Then we pumped the water out of this enclosure, and laid bare the very bed of the river. Then we laid a massive stone flooring, 5 feet thick, extending 100 feet up-stream, and as much down-stream, of the bridge. This was very difficult and hard work. It was kept going day and night, without intermission, from March till the end of June. Then we cut great holes in our embankment, cleared out our machinery, and prepared for the arrival of the flood at the beginning of July. Each year one-half of one bridge was finished, and the whole was completed at the end of June 1890.

In connection with the Barrage were completed the three great canals to carry off all the river supply from above it. So that practically now the Low Nile is emptied every season at the Barrage and diverted into these canals, and no water at all escapes to the sea. The natives wade everywhere across the river north of this point. Since it was completed, the Barrage has given no trouble. It holds up every year 4 metres, or 13 feet of water. The three trunk canals were all supplied with locks 160 feet by 28 feet, and adapted for navigation. The whole of these works cost about 800,000l. The annual increase of the cotton crop, compared to what it was before 1884, is never less than two and a-half millions sterling, which has not been a bad investment for Egypt.

Turning to Upper Egypt, my colleague, Colonel Ross, directed his attention very closely to the adjustment of canals overlapping one another, passing under and passing over one another; so that in

future I trust that with the feeblest Nile flood it will be possible to pour water over every acre of the land.

The question of drainage was very thoroughly taken up. Twelve years ago it may be said that there were no drainage channels in Egypt. Two years ago there were about 1000 miles of such channels, some with beds as wide as 60 feet and flowing deep enough to carry cargo boats, others with beds only 3 or 4 feet wide. I am glad to say by these means large tracts in Lower Egypt which had been abandoned as totally ruined, have now been restored to cultivation. The level of the lake in the Fayúm was reduced by 13 feet between 1885 and 1893, and most of the inundated lands around it have been again dried.

I have already mentioned the cruel hardship of the corvée, the serf army of 85,000 men who were employed in the canal clearances from January to July, nearly half the year. I believe this institution was as old as the Pharaohs, and it was not easy to abolish it. But of course it went sorely against our British grain. Little by little we got money to enable us to pay our labour. By an annual outlay of 400,000l. this spring corvée has entirely ceased since 1889, and now the Egyptian labourer carries out these clearances in as free a manner as his brother in Middlesex, and gets paid for his work.

Having thus, to the best of our powers, utilised the water in the river flowing past us, we turned our attention to the storage of the surplus waters. Without some such storage it is impossible to increase the cultivation during the Low Nile. All the water is used up. During High Nile there is always a great volume escaping useless to the sea.

There are two ways in which the water may be stored; either by throwing a dam right across the river and forming a great lake above it, or, if such a place can be found, by diverting the flood water into some suitable hollow, and drawing it off from there at the season of low supply, as done by Herodotus' celebrated Lake Moris. At one time there was a hope that such a storage basin might be found. An American gentleman, named Mr. Cope Whitehouse, in search of the real Moris, found a very remarkable saucer-shaped depression just south of the Fayúm. We knew it could not have been Moris, because in its bed we found no traces of a deposit of Nilotic mud, but it might be possible all the same to utilise it. The place was very carefully surveyed, and the project was estimated; but it was found that the cost of conveying the water into this basin would be so great that it was out of the question.

Attention was then turned to the possible sites where a stone dam might be built right across the river. The southern boundary of Egypt just now is near Wady Halfa, the second cataract. It is no use going to look for sites south of this, for the country is in the hands of the Mahdi and his fierce dervish soldiers. North of this point, unquestionably the best site-perhaps the only possible site-is where the Nile valley is traversed by a broad dyke of hard Syenite

granite, in passing over which the river forms its first cataract just south of Assouan. It is here divided into several channels between rocky islands, and no channel is deep, so that it would be easy to divert the water from one after another, to lay bare the bed of the river, and lay the foundations of the dam in the open air. It wants no engineer to understand what an advantage this is.

And the great dam, such as was designed by Mr. Willcocks, would have been a work worthy of the land of the Pyramids and Karnak-a great wall of squared granite blocks-82 feet thick at base, of a maximum height of 115 feet, 1 miles long, pierced by sluices large enough to allow of the whole Nile at highest flood rushing through. The lake formed would have been 120 miles long. Would this not have been a work of some majesty to commemorate for ever the English rule in Egypt-a work one would have been proud to have had a hand in? But it was not to be. The Egyptian saw no objection to it. The money could have been found. But there was an insuperable obstacle created when, on the Island of Philæ, about 250 B.C., Ptolemy II. built a temple to Isis, on the site of older buildings long disappeared. Round this temple other buildings clustered, built by Greeks and Romans. Those of you who have not seen them, are probably familiar from pictures with the group of venerable buildings standing amidst palm trees on the rocky island, and reflected in the waters below.

Had Ptolemy only built his temple on the island of Elephantine, a few miles north, it would have been unaffected by the great dam, but Philæ is just to the south, or up-stream side of where the great dam must necessarily have come, and in consequence the island, with its temples, would be drowned for about six months every year. You probably remember the outburst of rage and indignation which the announcement of this proposed desecration created in London last summer. It was not to be tolerated that England should commit such vandalism. In vain it was answered that the place belonged to Egypt, not to England-that the Egyptian, who was to gain so much by the dam, cared absolutely nothing about Ptolemy and his templesthat he was prepared to pay a large price for a great work to benefit his country. What business was it of England to forbid him? For once,

And it was not only the English who were indignant. and only for once, I fear, since we occupied Egypt in 1882, was educated opinion in England and France at one. Both alike insisted that Philæ should not be drowned. Nor must I admit had all the engineers that were interested in the question the full courage of their opinions. While they longed to build the dam, and lamented the perverse fate that had put Phile there, still they wished to spare Phile and their voice has prevailed. The majestic structure has been cut down 27 feet, and now will only be 88 feet high, and Philæ will stand henceforth in a lake, but will never be drowned.

Personally I accept the situation, for I never believed that it would be sacrificed. But yet as an engineer, I must sigh over the

lost opportunity for England of making such a splendid reservoir. And as a friend to Egypt, I sigh still more that the country will not have such a splendid supply of water as would enable Upper Egypt to have the full benefits now possessed by Lower Egypt, and Lower Egypt to expand and flourish.

The reduced scheme will, however, be a great boon to the country, and I trust will now be put in hand without delay.

In 1884, when the expedition up the Nile was first being considered, I was asked by the general officer commanding in Egypt, whether I thought there was any possibility of the Mahdi diverting the river in the Soudan, and depriving Egypt of its water. The late Sir Samuel Baker was in Cairo at the time, and I consulted him as to whether he knew of any place in the Nile valley where during highest flood the water spills off to the right or left, towards the Red Sea or the Libyan Desert. He said he was sure there was no such place, and then I told the general it would be impossible for the Mahdi to divert the Nile. I was sure that with his savages he would never dam up the low supply until its surface attained the height of flood supply, and if even then during flood there was no spill channel, Egypt was safe enough.

But what the Mahdi could not do, a civilised people could do. A government official has no business to talk politics, and the Royal Institution is no place for politics; but I may be allowed to point out an evident enough fact, that the civilised possessor of the Upper Nile valley holds Egypt in his grasp.

At this moment the Italians are on the eastern edge of that valley -a nation, I must say, who have been consistently most friendly to us in Egypt. Supposing that they occupied Khartoum, the first thing they would naturally and very properly do would be to spread the waters of the Low Nile over the Soudan; and no nation in Europe understands irrigation so well. And what then would become of Egypt's cotton crops? They could only be secured by a series of the most costly dams over the river, and the fate of Phila would surely be sealed, But more than this: a civilised nation on the Upper Nile would surely build regulating sluices across the outlet of the Victoria Nyanza, and control that great sea as Manchester controls Thirlmere. This would probably be an easy operation. Once done, the Nile supply would be in their hands; and if poor little Egypt had the bad luck to be at war with this people on the upper waters, they might flood them, or cut off their water supply at their pleasure.

Is it not evident, then, that the Nile from the Victoria Nyanza to the Mediterranean should be under one rule? That time is perhaps far off. I conclude what I have to say to-night by giving you the assurance, and I challenge contradiction, that at no time in the long history of Egypt under Pharaoh or Ptolemy, Roman or Arab, or Turk, have the people of the country been so prosperous, or so justly ruled as during the last nine years.

[C. S.-M.]

WEEKLY MEETING,

Friday Afternoon, February 1, 1895.

SIR JAMES CRICHTON-BROWNE, M.D. LL.D. F.R.S. Treasurer and Vice-President, in the Chair.

HENRY IRVING, Esq. D.Lit.

Acting an Art.

My immediate purpose is not so much to deal with the existing classification of the Fine Arts as to add to the recognised number one other, the Art of Acting-that art which Voltaire spoke of as "the most beautiful, the most difficult, the most rare." The claim that I make is purely a technical one, for the thing itself has long ago been done. The great bulk of thinking-and unthinkingpeople accept Acting as one of the Arts; it is merely for a formal and official recognition of the fact that I ask. The people, who are the students of life, have learned their lesson, and perhaps the professors should now learn it also. In the face of the widespread influence of the stage of to-day and its place in the thoughts and hearts of the people, it would seem about as necessary to vindicate acting as an art as it would be to justify the existence of the air we breathe or the sunshine which makes life joyous; but when we find that up to now the records are deficient, we should, I think, endeavour to have them completed. Even so widely sympathetic a writer as Taine by inference excludes acting when he speaks of "the five great arts of poetry, sculpture, painting, architecture, and music"; and sometimes lesser minds than his use the general omission to classify acting as amongst the higher organized efforts of man, as a means of perpetually assailing this particular craft and those who follow it; recalling an eccentric and intolerant time, when it was said against Shakespeare that he had never been to Court, and against Molière's memory that his body had been denied full Christian burial. Official recognition of anything worthy is a good, or at least a useful thing. It is a part, and an important part, of the economy of the State; if it is not, of what use are titles and distinctions, names, ribbons, badges, offices, in fact all the titular and sumptuary ways of distinction? Systems and courts, titles and offices, have all their part in a complex and organised civilisation, and no man and no calling is particularly pleased at being compelled to remain outside a closed door.

Acting is a part of human nature. It is originally nature's own method of education in the earliest stages; and its purposeful organisation is like that of any other organisation-an Art. Out of their heightening civilisation the Greeks evolved and formulated a drama,