The following estimate was made by me of the cost of protecting the Delta proper between the two branches of the Nile during the high flood of 1887:--
Cost of protection for 432 kilometres of bank or 1,200,000 acres of cultivation:--
{ Sand bags 60,000 @ £ ·03 = £ 1,800 _Materials_ { Stone 5,000 @ „ ·50 = „ 2,500 _paid for_ { Stakes 55,000 @ „ ·06 = „ 3,300 -------- £ 7,600 ========
{ Camel loads of stalk for 42 kilometres, _Materials_ { 14,000 @ £ ·15 = £ 2,100 _not paid for_ { -------- Total materials £ 9,700 ========
15 engineers @ £80 = £ 1,200 Unpaid corvee, 1,374,079 men @ £ ·03 = „ 41,222 ======== Total labour £ 42,422 ======== Total materials and labour £ 52,122
This works out to £120 per kilometre of bank, or £·045 per acre of land protected. It is a very cheap insurance.
31. =Projects.=--No account of the Nile in 1904 would be complete without an enumeration and slight examination of the projects before the public for the provision of sufficient water to the Nile in times of low supply to insure the perennial irrigation of the whole of Egypt; to utilise these perennial waters by converting basin tracts into perennially irrigated ones; to protect the country from the dangers accompanying high floods; and to permit of the reclamation of the low salted lands of Lower Egypt which border the Mediterranean sea.
Egypt has a total irrigable area of 6¹⁄₄ millions acres. Of this area, ¹⁄₄ of a million acres, which are to-day inundated in flood and lie along the edge of the deserts, must continue to be inundated in flood for all time, to prevent the sands of the desert from spreading over the Nile Valley. Their value is £5,000,000. Four million acres are perennially irrigated. They have a mean value of £55 per acre, and have a total value of £220,000,000. Of the remaining two million acres, two-thirds are irrigated only in flood and one-third is not irrigated at all. These 2 million acres have a mean value of £25 per acre, and are worth £50,000,000. The land of Egypt may be considered as worth £275,000,000 to-day. If it were possible to perennially irrigate the 2 million acres which are without such irrigation, their value would be increased by £30 per acre, or by £60,000,000.