"By Bonnieigor in the remote uplands of central Africa, this monument marks a beginning." "With these drops of water the River Nile begins its 4000-miie journey northward to the Mediterranean crossing half a continent and 7000 years of recorded human history." "On its banks, civilization built early marvels kingdoms rose and fell, gods appeared and vanished." "Their destinies inseparabiy joined to the river none were masters of it." "More than ever dependent on the life stream of the Niie man still tries to impose his rule." "To learn the impact of his growing intrusion cousteau team members study the changes now occurring in the earth's longest river." "Transported by the expedition's speciaiiy-fitted pBy catalina the team members will follow the entire course of the Niie." "in their 1 0-month journey encounter the endlessly various lives still sustained by the river some of it little altered since prehistoric times." "Aiways, in its passage across a changing landscape and the shifting patterns of life upon it the river went its own way." "Man's early devices had little effect upon it." "Now, increasingly, man's machines have the power to alter the Niie forever." "Not only are ancient cultures and animal sanctuaries threatened by extinction but men are learning that technological triumphs sometimes create problems greater than the ones they seek to solve." "On the Niie, man has preserved some of his noblest monuments." "Today, it is the river itself that may be most in need of his protection." "Long travelers upon and beneath the seas phiiippe and Jacques cousteau this time take to the air." "Their first destination, the mountain headwaters of the Niie." "As the catalina climbs above the waters off corsica the cousteaus leave behind the Calypso in which they have been charting the Mediterranean's increasing pollution." "Now they will study the greatest of its river systems, the Niie which once emptied as much as 84 billion cubic meters of water into the inland sea each year." "Fiying southward, the cousteaus' path will cross the waterless Sahara to the Ruwenzori Range, once called the Mountains of the Moon." "part of Africa's great central rift, it forms a vast escarpment sometimes rising 1 6,000 feet into the equatorial sky close to the catalina's operational ceiling." "Here, in midair, hangs the true source of the Niie the moisture-iaden clouds moving eastward from the Atiantic that make the Ruwenzori Mountains one of the wettest regions on earth and for the catalina, threading its way among the peaks one of the most hazardous." "Trapped by the snowcapped summits of the great barrier cooied by the upper altitudes the clouds release their rain on the mountain slopes running off through wild upland streams into the great catch basins of Lake Aibert and Lake Victoria the major reservoir from which the upper White Niie flows." "Descending through the broken overcast the travelers at last glimpse the swift current of the upper Niie here still nearly as unspoiled as it was at its discovery more than a century ago." "As captain cousteau traces their course upstream through uganda phiiippe brings the catalina low over the clustered Sese islands in the northern end of Lake Victoria only a few miles from the airport of entebbe." "Littie reduction." "it is here that the cousteaus first sight a strange phenomenon:" "clusters of wraith-iike columns rising from the surface of the lake." "Okay, let's go down lower." "Suspecting that they may be waterspouts or even dust twisters carried out over the lake phiiippe approaches cautiously." "even flying at an altitude of 300 feet the swaying columns tower to double that height above the plane." "it is only when the catalina is brought to the edge of one of the whirling clouds that the cousteaus at last realize the character of the mysterious coionnades." "They are lake files veritable storms of insect life rising from the water." "Now a challenge appears." "Like a great aerial armada, a phalanx of birds sweeps in to attack." "Abruptiy, the men aboard the catalina are witnesses to an onslaught of predators by which nature balances accounts between one species and another." "eager to follow the course of this one-sided action phiiippe brings the catalina in to a landing." "Ahead of them, the dark clouds of insects are moving westward across the island." "Swept by the wind away from their natural breeding bed in the lake itself the numbers of files are so vast that no attrition halts their survival." "even the cumulative sound of their tiny wings is like a storm." "With only six to 1 2 hours of life after rising to the surface of the lake the files have but a single purpose:" "To mate before they die." "Their entire development designed for a few climactic hours the files spread their wings in mating flight." "Then, spent, they faii again to the surface of the lake where the veracious tiiapia and other fish await them." "Today, near Jinja, a series of watery stairways mark the point where, in 1 862 a young British colonial officer, John Hanning Speke first sighted Ripon Falls and determined that Lake Victoria was the major source of the Niie." "Though disputed long after his accidental death his discovery remains secure." "But the Ripon Falls are all but drowned by the dam which now regulates the flow from the lake." "Landing in quieter waters downstream from Lake Victoria the airborne travelers make rendezvous with members of the overland team." "Leaving the catalina at anchor the cousteaus set out by caravan across uganda's primitive back country still alive with one of the world's last great assemblies of wild animals." "y ear by year, with growing haste Africa strikes out of an ancient world into the present." "Stiii, as we move through these open savannas i feel myself almost a stranger, a tourist in another time." "Most of us who have been brought up in the so-caiied developed countries have seen these animals only in zoos." "Here, in their native habitat, i feel that i am returning to some storybook period in the history of life visiting the images of a childhood we ourselves no longer remember." "For these animals, these infinitely varied inventions of nature still convey to us a sense of the miraculous." "in a world that encourages uniformity, that judges values by their utility perhaps these animals, like so many of their kind, also are doomed to disappear in favor of some more commercially useful species." "y et i cannot avoid a bitter sense of loss that we, born to a world that still held these creatures are being robbed of a priceless inheritance:" "A life that welcomes diversity, not sameness that treasures astonishment and wonder instead of boredom." "Deadiy huntress, the lioness does not always make her kill." "in the bush, even the vehicles falter." "The good-natured local inhabitants sometimes wind up pushing them." "Led by philippe, the team moves on." "With Dominique Sumian and the camera crew he leaves the catalina to search for the island refuge of a creature whose numbers constitute one-fifth of all living mammal species, the bat." "protected by the river's torrent from natives who eat them a great colony of the flying mammals here festoons the branches of the trees." "Hanging in untidy clusters, awaiting nightfall the foX-faced bats stir uneasily, quick to quarrel." "At last, as twilight approaches, the bat population comes to life." "A fruit-eating species, they will spend the night foraging for bananas, mangoes, pineapples and other fruit sometimes threatening the crops of farmers and commercial growers." "Near daybreak, with an unsteady rush of wings, the bats return." "Giutted, they gather once more upon the branches sometimes bend them down, almost to breaking." "As the night foragers hang in sleep, other hunters awaken in the dawn." "Across the still waters, ugandan fishermen strike the surface trying to frighten the fish into their nets." "Near shore waits the patient shadow of another formidable hunter the marabou stork." "Aboard the catalina also, life begins to stir." "Atop the waist of the craft, protected by netting against the attack of insects Dominique has found a cool and private berth safely aloof from the mundane chores below." "As a standard precaution against parasitic organisms endemic in some sections of the Niie basin the water is carefully filtered and boiled." "Otherwise, philippe and his companions might be breakfasting in the dining room of a weii-staffed hotel." "clean rice." "Across the surface of the lake a string of pelicans also arrives to consider the day's menu." "Obiivious both to the team's rubber raft and to the hippos iazing in the lake the pelicans are perfectly mannered guests, catching fish in flawless unison." "To the tiny islands that dot the lake come other visitors." "The shores of the lake are occupied by permanent residents often hostile to intruders." "But here, in clustered shelters of papyrus reeds the rejected Karamoja from the harsh lands to the northeast..." "Approaching one of the temporary guests, i find that the visitor also speaks english now a common language in a nation of many diverse dialects." "Are you a fisherman here?" "y es, i am a fisherman." "What do you catch?" "i catch these tiiapias." "Tiiapias?" "Are you from France?" "y es." "How is France?" "is France all right?" "is France all right?" "Oh, yeah." "Very much." "Have you come to catch fish?" "No, we come to visit." "y ou have a boat?" "y es, i have a boat." "Oh, i see." "From another fisherman, i hear the reasons that bring so many of the Karamoja to the islands for nearly half of each year." "He's photoing us?" "This man. is he photoing us?" "is he what?" "photoing." "Taking our pictures." "y es." "Are you from here, from this region?" "No. i'm from central Karamoja there." "central Karamoja?" "y es." "How is it there?" "There it's all right, anyway." "i catch fish and...." "is there a lot of water there?" "Water?" "y ou have streams, rivers?" "No, no, no." "Sort of...?" "Desert?" "Nothing." "Nothing?" "There is no lakes, even rivers." "No?" "y es." "is that why you--?" "We just depend on bore wells." "is that why you come here?" "y es." "For the water?" "For the water and for fish also." "Because we are lacking meat." "i see." "How long have you been here?" "We have taken about five month." "Five months?" "y es." "y ou go back?" "We shall have to go back." "For just a room, then we come back." "Where do you like it best, here or over there?" "No, here." "Why don't you stay here?" "We stay, of course, for now plenty of nets here." "everything i get plenty." "Dried or smoked upon the racks by the exultant tribesmen vast quantities of tilapia and other fish are prepared for use either for food or as barter for other goods in leaner months to come." "Like distant children far from home, they return to the river in times of trouble." "To each, the Niie is mother, protector, food and water survival." "Here, even the great marabou stork which can kill a flamingo with a single blow of its heavy bill..." "Now tranquility is left behind." "in swift descent, the river rushes northward in a succession of wild rapids." "Foiiowed on its course by the cousteaus in the catalina the Niie plunges through one of the most spectacular events in its 4000-miie journey:" "The Murchison Falls, discovered in 1 864 by an aristocratic english sportsman and his indomitable wife Samuei and Fiorence Baker." "in a iow-ievei run that brings a moment of silent tension aboard the aircraft phiiippe dares the treacherous downdrafts above the falls for a closer view." "With only minor damage to the nose the catalina is brought to a safe landing in calmer waters below the falls." "Then, in the rubber boats, the cousteaus return upstream against the heavy 6-knot current." "Maneuvering their craft with difficulty through a turmoil of spray and heaving waters they manage at last to approach the base of the falls." "There, pressed through a rocky gap barely 20 feet wide the entire volume of the Victoria Niie seems to explode with volcanic force." "Reieased from tension, the Niie moves on more calmly through a broadening valley." "Here again, in its passage through marsh and meadow uncounted species take their life from the river." "A basking crocodile, a flight of African skimmers an elephant with her infant progeny." "But on each species, nature has struck a balance, set a limitation." "elephant numbers are kept in check by loss of forage." "Against zebra, gazelle or antelope nature has set lion and leopard to eat their fill." "Against the armored crocodile, she has sent more devious foes predators to rob the nest." "Surprisingiy agile, this female crocodile has climbed the steep bank to make her nest burying her eggs in the sandy soil high above the rush of the river." "But many a nest does not survive piiiaged by relentless predators such as the monitor lizard." "interrupted at his feeding, the monitor flees the members of the cousteau team leaving behind a debris of broken shells." "But among them, one small, prematurely exposed crocodile survives." "placed in the river by its rescuers the little reptile swims off to continue a life so rudely begun." "Siientiy watching the rescue the maternal crocodile fulfills some dim guardian role but it is doubtful that she ever will recognize her offspring again." "Later, philippe and his companions move unchallenged among the herds of hippopotami." "Ordinariiy peaceful when left alone they are not always as docile as they appear." "y early, they take a higher toll of human life than do either lions or elephants." "especially bad-tempered during mating season bulls sometimes kill rivals with slashing attacks with their huge teeth a fatal result generally rare among members of this wild species." "Often as heavy as two tons, ungainly on feet too small for their bulk the hippos nonetheless leave the water at night sometimes walk for several miles to graze and consume as much as 400 pounds of grass before returning to the river." "Though groomed and rid of parasites by his guest the hippopotamus is sometimes careless of reciprocal courtesies." "probable birthplace of man, site of a spectacular early civilization much of Africa long lay shrouded from Western eyes." "The north, from Red Sea to the Atiantic fell under Arab dominance as early as the seventh century." "Much later, the southern tip was conquered by the europeans." "central Africa, its geography and its peoples remained almost as elusive and shy as the fabled sitatunga a marshland waterbuck which hides underwater and sometimes dies of sheer fright." "y et, seemingly immune to intrusion, the isolation of equatorial Africa was maintained not by armed resistance against alien visitors." "By an irony of history, its black tribal cultures and rich wildlife were preserved by the very thing that was its curse, the tsetse fly." "Traveiing overland with the cousteau team a Beigian scientist, Juies Hanotier, explains." "Aithough no more than one tsetse fly in a thousand carries the germ of trypanosomiasis, or sleeping sickness the insect, says Mr. Hanotier, has been a lethal barrier against foreign settlers." "Through centuries of exposure, wild animals have developed immunity to the disease carried by the fly." "But domesticated animals, such as cattle, which flourish in drier regions are easy victims." "if it were not for the tsetse fly, says Mr. Hanotier the rain-swept grazing areas of central Africa would long ago have been turned to stock raising and the wildlife would have vanished as it has elsewhere." "Later, in a paris institute for the study of parasites and tropical animal diseases Jacques cousteau questions a tsetse fly specialist, Dr. Jean Gruvei regarding research experiments with the 30,000 files maintained in his laboratory cages." "Obviousiy, says cousteau, the insects must represent a major threat to human ecology in central Africa." "Dr. Gruvei agrees." "Not only does the tsetse fly carry its debilitating and often fatal disease to man but its lethal effect on domestic animals has been a continuing obstacle to stock raising in the infested regions areas in which malnutrition often is widespread." "Offering to demonstrate the process by which the insect feeds Dr. Gruvei has a tsetse fly placed upon his own arm." "Quickiy, the hungry fly takes its stance, inserts its tubular snout and within a minute, is ready to take blood from its donor." "Drawing blood until its abdomen is swollen an infected fly simultaneously injects the parasite which it has received from diseased animals and stores in its salivary gland." "Though the tsetse fly was not identified as carrier until early in this century the symptoms of sleeping sickness itself had been commonly recognized." "Nervous tremors, fevers, speech difficulty, swollen facial features and white tongues are among the symptoms of advanced stages revealed by patients in the Li Rangu Hospitai in Sudan." "What are his chances of improving?" "Weii, it depends." "Sometimes you have very spectacular recoveries." "Denying sleep to its victims the disease produces instead a comatose lethargy which finally fades into death." "Downstream, beyond the range of the tsetse, the catalina reaches the Sudd a vast swamp as large as england in which the Niie itself seems to lose its way and its identity as a river." "Here, safe from the baleful fly cattle are central to the existence of the Dinka one of the Niiotic tribes which occupy the tracts of land hidden within the Sudd." "even the dung of the cattle, when burned, provides a protective smoke cloud and the ashes to coat bodies against the myriad mosquitoes and marsh insects that swarm about them." "More out of curiosity than urgent need the Dinka villagers accept the pills and salves and minor applications of first aid offered by members of the cousteau team." "For your asthma." "They should take it with water." "Not vastly impressed by Western culture and its ways the Dinka long ago developed their own back-country medicine." "Again, the wastes of cattle serve a vital function." "Their urine is widely used as an antiseptic, as a food preservative sometimes combined with ashes as an extra protection against insect bites." "even the babies are carefully bathed in urine to forestall infections." "Living as members of the tribal families the cattle themselves are not eaten until they die of natural causes." "But their milk and sometimes even small quantities of their blood drawn from neck punctures are a food resource shared by man and animal alike." "A healthy, cheerful people the Dinka are content with a life based on the fullest use of minimal resources." "Fierceiy independent, the nomadic tribe builds only temporary shelters moving upland and down with the rise and fall of the Niie." "even play has a purpose." "Here a Dinka girl is painted for a dance that is part of the social rites leading to courtship and marriage." "But her role is as a judge, not as a participant." "it is the men who must strut and dance in a staged display trying to impress the hard-eyed village maidens holding up fingers telling how many cattle they own a promise of security in lean times to come." "The team moves on." "Today, even in the siow-fiying catalina the Sudd can be crossed by air in little more than a few hours." "But in the past, its shifting maze of channels blocked by water hyacinths or papyrus reeds the vast marsh required months to cross by boat." "Just as the tsetse fly isolated much of central Africa so the labyrinth of swamp and its masses of vegetation have helped conceal dry land areas that today form the last great natural animal refuge left on the continent." "Aboard the catalina, the automatic receiver prints a facsimile weather map from the central forecasting agency warning of a severe storm front moving across their course." "philippe decides to bring the plane down near one of the Shiiook tribal villages scattered for 250 miles along the Niie's meandering watercourse." "Whiie fishermen from the village pull in their nets members of the cousteau team secure the catalina against the imminent downpour." "Though nearly one-haif of the White Niie's total volume is lost by evaporation from the vast shaiiows of the Sudd the loss is replaced by tropical storms such as this and by the entry of the tributary river, the Subat, at the Sudd's northern perimeter." "closely related to the Dinka, the Shiiook are markedly different taking much of their food from the river itself." "unlike the Dinka's autonomous bands the Shiiook have a long tradition of divine kingship." "For a people scattered over wide distances the king not only provides a unifying presence but is, indeed, the living symbol of the tribe's prosperity and survival." "Long tradition prescribes that a king be ritually killed when his powers begin to fall or disaster strikes the tribe." "y et both in years of want or plenty the waters of the Niie are so clouded with sediment that none of the Shiiook have ever observed the fish they catch swimming in their natural habitat." "To film some of the Niie's species and display their underwater behavior to the tribesmen themselves phiiippe and Dominique have assembled a portable tank." "into it now, one by one are placed the various living specimens netted by the villagers." "Among them, a formidable predator, the tigerfish." "Adorned by their characteristic rows of beaded scars the villagers watch as phiiippe demonstrates the use of a diver's snorkel." "Beiow the surface, the captured fish swim in this strange new environment." "Niie perch that sometimes grow to 1 50 pounds." "Tiiapia, whose tiny offspring, in times of danger take refuge in the father's mouth." "The catfish, equipped for the Niie's clouded waters with the feelers by which it probes its way along the bottom." "eager to try this new device, one of the young villagers dons the snorkel to explore a world which has been beside him all his life but which he has never seen." "unlike the nomadic Dinka the Shiiook have created permanent villages of their conical dwellings." "Weii outside the tsetse fly's range they, too, have cattle and live a relatively tranquil existence." "Seidom raid their neighbors, as in former times." "At least openly, no longer kill their faiiing kings." "But, free of the tsetse, they were also devoid of its protection." "Tranquii now, generations of Shiiook were frequent targets of slavers." "Though Arabs were the major buyers most raids were carried out by other conquered blacks armed by the slave traders." "Destroying an entire village in a sudden sweep the raiders would leave dead and wounded behind take their living quarry, chained like animals for sale at Khartoum, far to the north." "As the river itself journeys north, it, too, enters a landscape vastly changed." "Henceforth, it is the single thread of life through a desert in which every blade of green growth will depend on the river." "As the ancient Latin saying holds:" ""either the Niie or nothing."" "At Khartoum, capital of Sudan the White Niie is joined by its sister tributary the Biue Nile out of ethiopia which will contribute nearly two-thirds of the lower Niie's annual flow." "Now a little past midpoint in the Niie's long descent more than 2200 miles from its headwaters phiiippe lands the catalina near the presidential palace scene of much of the past century's turbulent history." "Once a great slave market at which Arabs bought captured blacks from the interior Khartoum no longer traffics in human life." "Today, it is a trading center for camels the cranky beasts which, for more than a thousand years have carried goods on the caravan routes radiating westward across the Sahara." "Khartoum would play a belated role in the great tide of Musiim and Arab influence which swept North Africa and, for a time, reached even into Spain and France." "Here, less than a century ago occurred the climactic struggle between Western and islamic cultures that would bring black Africa out of its continental isolation forever." "Though Western technology often has been the mainspring for new economic growth and development in Sudan the religious teachings of islam still hold sway." "Here, visitors to the mosque may join the faithful gathered for prayers five times each day." "in the palace, the chanted prayers have an ironic echo, for this, in the 1 870s was the citadel of Generai charles George Gordon adventurer and mystic once the appointed leader of christian england's crusade against the Arab slave trade." "But to england's moral crusade came a Musiim reply:" "A jihad, or holy war ied by a religious leader known as the Mahdi, or guide." "in March of 1 884, in the ornate palace, Gordon would find himself a prisoner." "Khartoum, isolated by the surrounding forces of the Mahdi." "For 1 0 months, defiant but helpless Gordon could gaze across to the far bank of the Niie waiting for relief which never came." "At last, in January 1 885 the Mahdi's forces swarmed across the river into the starving city and swept up these stairs to find their hated adversary waiting for their spears." "in hours, Khartoum was won, Gordon was dead and the Mahdi reigned in triumph." "But the triumph would be brief." "in less than a year, the Mahdi was dead." "in 1 898, less than 1 5 years after Gordon's defeat and death the tables, again, were turned." "Here, behind these clay walls of Omdurman, a few miles from Khartoum the Mahdi's followers themselves would await the onslaught of the British forces under Lord Kitchener." "in their decisive defeat the slave trade in Africa was finally and irretrievably destroyed." "But there were other changes, no less profound." "Brutaiiy awakened by the cannons of foreign powers much of Africa has passed from isolation to colonialism to seif-ruie in barely a century." "After the explorers and the moral crusaders came the generals and the businessmen and the engineers." "The gunboat was followed by the steam shovel and the tractor." "Today, the Niie no longer goes its own way." "y ear by year, like the tiny people of Liiiiput trying to chain Guiiiver weii-intentioned men try to bind the giant to their wishes." "As we fly northward toward egypt and the Mediterranean the Niie still has more than 1 800 miles to travel." "The wild freedom of its upland cataracts and rapids the vestiges of a more primitive continent, lie behind it." "Henceforth, mile by mile, the river will be progressively tamed learn to do as it is told." "y et as we follow the river through the land of the ancient pharaohs we shall discover that modern man, impatient for quick solutions cannot always foresee the consequences of the changes he imposes." "That the Niie itself, sometimes, is still wiser than he."