A second artificial connection with the Nile farther south was made at Manfalût by the excavation of a channel 30 kilometres in length. The part of this that remains now is called the “Manfalûtîyah” or “old Bahr Yûsuf.” About twenty years ago a large canal, called the Ibrahimîyah, was made for the irrigation of the Khedive Ismail Pasha’s large sugar-cane plantations. It was made to take off from the Nile at Asyût, 30 kilometres above Manfalût and 61 kilometres above Derût. It absorbed part of the Manfalûtîyah Canal from Beni Qora to Derût. At Derût, regulators of a fine description were constructed for the distribution of the water, and a regulator of five openings of three metres’ span, with a lock 8·50 metres wide, was made as the head work of the Bahr Yûsuf, which under the new nomenclature became a branch of the Ibrahimîyah Canal. When the Ibrahimîyah Canal was first opened, it appears from the Mémoires on Public Works, published by Linant de Bellefonds Bey in 1872-73, that its discharge was small compared with its present discharge, and the Fayûm summer irrigation must have been limited. M. Linant states that the bed width of the main Ibrahimîyah was 35 metres, and its reputed depth in summer 1·50 metres; but, in consequence of the inefficient means of dredging, a depth of one metre at most was all that could be obtained at the lowest level of the Nile; and he calculates that the minimum discharge, which theoretically should have reached Derût, was 666,840 cubic metres per 24 hours (273 cubic feet a second), but, in consequence of the inefficient dredging, no more than 369,624 cubic metres per 24 hours (151 cubic feet a second) were delivered. Under present conditions in the worst years the minimum has never fallen below two million cubic metres per 24 hours (818 cubic feet a second) since, at any rate, 1883. [Illustration: PLATE II. BRIDGE CARRYING THE BAZAAR STREET, MEDINET EL FAYÛM, OVER THE BAHR YÛSUF.] Of the Bahr Yûsuf before the Ibrahimîyah Canal was made, M. Linant remarks in the same Mémoires, that “it is the only canal in Egypt which, without receiving water from the river during the summer, nevertheless has enough to serve for the irrigation of the Fayûm from the springs in its bed.” These springs still supplement the summer supply of the Fayûm by adding to the discharge, which is apportioned to the Bahr Yûsuf at Derût, about a quarter of a million cubic metres a day (102 cubic feet a second). During the summer and winter the water of the Bahr Yûsuf is (with the exception of an insignificant quantity lifted for the irrigation of small areas at different points along its course) reserved for the Fayûm, but during the flood season its channel is used to carry water for the inundation of the lands on both sides of it, and later it is made use of as the channel of discharge for the basins which it has filled, or helped to fill.