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tion of sovereignty and territory: it is the victory of peace; it is creation.

Old Egypt is now so fairly in step with the march of progress as to be attracting the attention of the civilized world. Irrigation is the lever of this progress--the irrigation of definite science, rather than of chance or guesswork; and the move to harness the Nile and compel it to surrender its magical richness to the soil is a project that will be watched by millions of students of utilitarianism. Stated simply, it means the increase of the country's productive capacity by twenty-five per cent., bringing, as it will, considerable stretches of desert soil within the limits of cultivation, while vast tracts of land already arable will be rendered capable of producing two, if not three, crops in the year, by having "summer water" supplied to the thirsting ground.

The Egypt of the map shows more than 400,000 square miles, an expanse nearly seven times as great as New England; but the practical Egypt--that which produces crops and sustains life--is barely as large as the States of Vermont and Rhode Island taken together. This is the ribbon-like strip of alluvial land bordering the Nile, a few miles wide on each side, and measuring not more than 10,500 square miles. The extension planned, and to be completed in the next six or eight years, wholly by irrigation, is no less magnificent in conception than the rescuing from the Libyan and Arabian deserts of 2500 square miles, or twice the area of Rhode Island. This will be exploitation in its truest sense, and its accomplishment will be a verification of the ancient saying that "Egypt is the Nile, and the Nile is Egypt."

As an object-lesson, this Egyptian enterprise should have no more interested observers than in America, especially in Colorado, Nevada, California, and other States of the West, where the irrigation expert is succeeding the railway-builder as a developer.

British contractors have agreed that the dam that is to "hold up" the historic river on which

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