The river is embanked and is crossed by the Pont Doumer, a fine railway bridge over i m.
In addition, various kinds of canals and endiked or embanked lakes had come into existence, forming altogether a vast network of more or less stagnant waters.
On the west bank of the huge colossi of Memnon marked the entrance of his funerary temple, a magnificent building which was afterwards destroyed, and the great lake of Birket Habu was dug and embanked in front of his brick palace at the extreme south.
On the 7th of August 1897 Colonel Hunter surprised and annihilated a weak Dervish garrison at Abu Hamed, to which place, by the 31st of October 1897, a railway had been laid across the Nubian desert from Wadi Haifa, a distance of 230 m., the record construction of 5300 yds surveyed, embanked and laid in one day having been attained.
The river is embanked from Piacenza, and continuously from Cremona, the total length of the embankments exceeding 600 m.
