80

Hydraulic Works of

[Book I.

Mr. St. John, mentions a species of Indian corn growing in the fieldsof Egypt , prodigiously prolific. On one ear, three thousand grains werereckoned! and a lady, who frequently made the experiment in the The-baid, constantly found between eighteen hundred and two thousand.Egypt and Mahommed Ali, vol. i, 143. Another proof of the value ofirrigation is given by Herodotus. When speaking of that part of Egypt near Memphis , he observes, that the people enjoyed the fruits of the earthwith the smallest labor. “ They have no occasion for the process rwr theInstruments of agriculture, usual and necessary in other countries.” Thisremark of the historian, has been ridiculed by some authors; but its truthhas been verified by recent travelers. a

The advantages of artificial irrigation have not only been known fromthe earliest ages, but some of the most stupendous Works which the intel-lect of man ever called into existence, were designed for that purpose :works so ancient as to perplex our chronologists, and so vast as to inclinesome historians to dass them among natural formations. Ancient writersunite in asserting that Lake Moeris was ‘ the work of men’s hands,’ andconstructed by a king of that name ; its prodigious extent, however, hasled some modern authors to question its alleged origin, although artificialworks still extant, equal it in the amount of labor required ; as the Wallof China, the Pyramids, and other works of ancient Egypt. Sir WilliamChambers , when comparing the works of the remote ancients with thoseof Greece , observes that the city of Babylon would have covered allAttica ; that a greater number of men were employed in building it, thanthere were inhabitants of Greece ; that more materials were consumed ina single Egyptian Pyramid, than in all the public structures of Athens ;and that Lake Mareotis could have deluged the Peloponnesus , and ruinedall Greece . But incredible as the accounts of Lakes Mosris and Mareotismay appear, these works did not surpass, if they equaled, another exampleof Egyptian engineering, which had previously been executed. This wasthe removal of the Nile itself! In the reign of Menes, (the first, or oneof the first sovereigns) it swept along the Libyan chairi of mountains, that/ is, on one side of the valley that constitutes Egypt ; and in Order to renderit equally beneficial to both sides, a new channel was formed through thecentre of the valley, into which it was directed : an undertaking whichindicates a high degree of scientific knowledge at that early period.

Before the lakes and canals of Egypt or China could have been under-taken, the inhabitants must have been long under a regulär government,and one which could command the resources of a settled people, and of apeople too, who from experience could appreciate the value of such worksfor the purpose of irrigation, as well as the inefficiency of previous devicesfor the same object; that is, of machines for raising the water : for if itbe supposed the construction of canals to convey, of reservoirs to contain,and of locks and sluices to distribute water, preceded the use of Machinesfor raising it—it would be admitting that men in ignorant times had theability to conceive, and the skill to execute the most extensive and perfectworks that civil engineering ever produced—to have formed lakes likeoceans, and conveyed rivers through deserts, ere they well knew how toraise water in a bücket, or transmit it through a pipe or a gutter. Thefact is, ages must necessarily have elapsed before such works could havebeen dreamt of, and more before they could have been accomplished.Individuals would naturally have recourse to rivers in their immediatevicinity, from which (the Nile for example) they must long have toiled in

a St. John, vol. i, 181. Lindsay, Let. 5.