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Show THE GREAT ATBARA DAM. Some lessons can still be learned from Old England. On Monday last the great dam beyond Berber and the Fifth cataract of the Nile across the Atbara river was to have been dedicated. The Atbara is the chiefest Eastern tributary of the Nile. It pours down, an immense stream, from the hills of Abyssinia and the object of the dam Is to impound enough water to irrigate many millions mil-lions of acres of land that is now barren. It has required years of steady labor and millions of dollars. It has been done, of course, in the name of the Egyptian Government, but the Government of Great Britain is behind it. It is a part of Great Britain's plan to redeem and regenerate Africa, or more properly speaking it is one of the factors in that plan. It is, moreover, an effort on the part of the Imperial Government to extricate itself from de- Ipendence on outside nations for many costly products. prod-ucts. The dream of British statesmen is to produce pro-duce her own cotton, sugar, coffee and other tropical trop-ical and semi-tropical products, and to restore and add to her world's prestige as the greatest , of manufacturing powers. There is the further idea, which, if unspoken, is still a prominent, if not dominant one. Her tenure in Egypt does not rest altogether in good faith. When she took possession it was with the promise prom-ise that, so soon as she safely could, she would retire. re-tire. The world was not deceived. Mankind knew instinctively that while she owned the control con-trol of the Suez canal, she would never think it I safe to ahandon Egypt, hut with the great area restored re-stored to fertility, she can plead as a justification for her remaining in possession, the mighty advances ad-vances she has made and the prosperity to the Egyptian people, which she has Drought and which they waited for so long. There is, however, a national, honest pride in their thought of restoring Egypt to what it was when it was the world's granary. Still it is a tremendous work. The dam not only had to bo built, miles in length, but the river had to bo cleared of a pernicious vegetable vege-table growth which, coming in the bed of the river, grew until it was an obstruction sufficient to compel the river to break its banks and hew out for itself a new channel. The work was carried car-ried on 1500 miles by the river from its base at Cairo, under the burning sun of Africa, but it was persisted in, though Great Britain was passing through the crisis of a great foreign war, which stopped for the time being a princely source of revenue, and came, too, when the labor troubles in England had brought partial paralysis upon her manufactories and trade. "We have no account of the ceremonies of opening open-ing the canal last Monday, but they ought to have supplied inspiring themes to the orators who talked. In ancient days, Egyptian kings compelled com-pelled the people to build them tombs in the form of pyramids. It is said that one of them represents repre-sents the toil of 30,000 slaves for thirty years. They were built to minister to a false pride and a superstitious super-stitious fear. This work upon the Atbara ought to be as lasting last-ing as the pyramids, and was projected and carried car-ried through to completion on a thought, not to make sure a resting place for the dead, but to strew with blessings the paths of thousands and tens of thousands of living people for all time to come. It is a noble work and so great that it carries with it Great Britain's title to Egypt. Our own countrymen, through their representatives in Congress, Con-gress, are about to undertake the further consideration consid-eration of the question of irrigation. This work in Africa should be a telling object lesson to them, and should awaken the thought in the minds of Congressmen east of the Mississippi that, possibly, irrigation is, after all, the most important industrial indus-trial question before the American people. |
