3-003-905 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Inundation of the Nile: view below Kafr Zayat, showing the railway-bridge, and train off the line, 1861. 'The Nile has risen this year seven feet and a half higher than the customary floods, causing great losses, and involving many of the inhabitants in utter ruin...The communications with the interior are so completely destroyed that there had been no steamer even from Cairo since the Calcutta passengers came through...there is no doubt that a large quantity of cotton is lost...in one village, sixty persons are believed to have perished...The railway is damaged for twenty miles more or less, and passengers from India have to go down the Nile from Cairo by steamers...The railway accident at Kafr Zayat occurred on the 1st October, but no lives were lost. The bank was undermined by the flood, and on the train passing it gave way and left the carriages as shown in our Engraving'. From "Illustrated London News", 1861.