The wells are used in a manner quite similar to that
explained in India, and irrigate a large fraction of the
land at present reclaimed. It is difRcult to get exact
data on Chinese irrigation, but the writer is confident
that this one nation has more acres under some manner
of artificial watering than Continental Europe. It
utilizes excess rains, in one part, and, by an excellent
canal system, transports this excess to less favored
regions, thus effectually checking the ravages of in-
undation. Chinese engineers do not tolerate such
devastating floods as our nation permits on the Ohio
and Mississippi rivers even to this day. The land



26 American Irrigation Farming

farmed in the Empire, is farmed intensively, surpassed
alone by Japan, in all the Oriental World.
EGYPT.
From the Nile came the first encour-
The Assuan ^ j. • • ^ tt

Dam agement to irrigate. How appropriate

that on this river should be placed the
greatest masonry dam known to the modern world —
the Assuan dam. For more than i ,000 miles from its
mouth, this river Nile does not receive a tributary and
where it has a rich, fertile country, lacking only the
water to make it productive, it has the least to give at
the time when the growing crops most need the water.
To remedy this defect England set this most practical
problem before her greatest and best engineers. Go-
ing up the river, they found a logical place to take out
the water from the river in diverting canals at Assiout.
