One point remains to be noticed. Under the old basin system in Egypt there could hardly be too high a flood, nor did a low summer Nile create any extraordinary difficulties when there was so little summer cultivation. But with perennial irrigation a high flood becomes a matter of supreme anxiety, and the preservation of its dykes is the anxious care of every village. On the other hand, all the schemes for reservoirs aim at increasing the summer supply. If the Bahr el Gebel was trained so as to bring down more water in summer, it would also bring down more in flood, though the swamps would still act as an escape for the waters beyond a certain rise. It might therefore become a matter of great importance to Egypt to actually diminish the supply during the flood, especially as year by year more of the basin land is converted to perennial irrigation. Regulators at Lakes Victoria and Albert would serve in some degree for flood protection as well as for storage against summer use. It is calculated that the complete closing of the outlet of Lake Victoria at the Ripon Falls would only raise the surface of the lake 20 inches in a year. But it would be far more effective if some of the flood-waters of the rivers—_e.g._, the Blue Nile and the Atbara—which are fed by the rains of Abyssinia could be intercepted before they reached Egypt. A large irrigation during the flood and early winter along the Blue Nile might indeed actually lengthen out the flood in Egypt, whilst depriving it of danger through excess at any one period. CHAPTER XIII THE UNITY OF NILELAND It is no longer possible to think of our occupation of Egypt as merely a stepping-stone on the road to India—‘the Englishman reaching far over to his loved India.’ Still less can it be looked upon solely as a means for the regeneration of Egypt and the education of her people till they are able to pass from a state of tutelage and stand securely by themselves. Certainly, great strides have been made in this direction. If Egypt were the whole matter we might hope that in time, but not in one or two generations, a race of native administrators might rise up, to whom the affairs of that country might safely be left. But Egypt is only a portion of the great country of the Nile. Looking southward from Alexandria or Suez, the horizon is only bounded by the sources of the Nile, and these do not well up at Assouan, as Herodotus was told. We might hope that the Egyptians would be capable of managing Egypt; but not the most sanguine enthusiast could imagine a period of time sufficient to make them capable of managing the Soudan. A cry of ‘The Soudan for the Soudanese’ would hardly be more ridiculous. The story of the binding of the Nile, incomplete as that story is at present, makes one thing, at least, perfectly clear, and that is, that all Nileland is one country. No divided sovereignty is possible; there must be one firm hand over all.