Taking the not very high price of 175 piastres per kantar (1 kantar = nearly 100 pounds), the annual value reached £10,000,000. A season like that of 1889, when the summer supply was very low, and not the lowest on record, would mean the loss of at least one-tenth of this amount, and even more, in spite of the most successful working of the Barrage, and the most careful system of rotations. Against such a loss the Reservoir is a complete insurance, and, as a low year cannot safely be reckoned as occurring less than once in five years, the annual value of such insurance must be set down as £200,000. The figures give some idea of the value of the new supply. The estimate does not err on the side of exaggeration. It was framed in the most cautious and conservative manner possible, and, in fact, it would be by no means rash to put the total annual value a good deal higher. According to the financial arrangement, the first payment towards defraying the cost of the works was included in the budget for 1903, but no fresh taxation for the purpose was to be imposed till 1904, and even then the full amount of direct benefit to the Exchequer will not be realized till 1910. Time is thus given for the full effects of the change to be felt, and the Reservoir will be paid for out of its own profits. The alteration of the basin lands to the new system must take some time, and their cultivators will thus be given full opportunity to familiarize themselves with the new methods of agriculture which they will have to employ. The scheme of distribution allotted nearly 50 per cent. of the Reservoir supply to the Fayoum and the province between Assiout and Cairo. Just south of Assiout is the head of the great Ibrahimiyah Canal, which not only supplies these provinces, but also feeds the Bahr Yusuf, which waters the Fayoum. It was necessary, in view of the increased discharge, to widen the upper reaches of this canal, and to provide it with a new regulating head. But more than this was required to insure its receiving the proper proportion of water whenever the sluice-gates of the Dam were opened. Accordingly, at the same time that the foundations of the Dam at Assouan were laid, a new Barrage was begun at Assiout just downstream of the head of the Ibrahimiyah Canal.