"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." "in its northward journey through half the African continent the Niie crosses not only distance, but time." "For uncounted centuries, the river has mirrored the passage of men and animals that have drawn life from it a life often little changed since the first farmers came to its desert valley." "Their existence regulated by the rise and fall of the river many of the peasants, or feiiahin, still water their fields and turn the soil with tools unchanged since recorded history began." "The fellahin endure." "The early civilizations out of which they came have long since vanished leaving behind their burial chambers and broken temples mute testaments of past glory and the brief tenure of power." "Today, a new civilization stands on the Niie." "But as the cousteau team discovers the present, no less than the past, still owes its existence to the river." "y ear by year, more lives are suspended on the river's slender thread." "in the expanding cities of egypt and the Sudan, in cairo and Khartoum in alexandria or Juba, the populations multiply threaten to outpace the food supplied by the river's narrow margin of fertile earth." "egypt remains, as an early historian described it, "the gift of the Niie a crowded oasis locked in the immense emptiness of the desert."" "To meet growing needs, men have built huge structures across the Niie turned the river god into a servant." "But sometimes, technology itself creates new dangers threatens the very human ends it tries to serve." "Our problem begins in 1 960." "y es." "When the egyptian government determined to build the High Dam and the government told us to get out from here to New Haifã', but we refused." "For most of its course since early history the Nile has provided the clearly marked path between central África and the sea." "But in southern Sudan, in the vast marshlands of the Sudd even the river seems to lose its way." "Below phiiippe cousteau and the catalina spreads a watery archipelago as large as england." "Through the maze of channels that in the past sometimes took months to cross the barge carrying the men and vehicles of the cousteau overland team threads its way north, toward rendezvous." "in this great shallow basin where the upper Niie loses half its water through evaporation an endlessly varied life shares sanctuary." "Here, hidden amid the drifting masses of water hyacinth and papyrus that often clog the channels thousands of scattered tribesmen, Nuer, Dinka, or Shiiook live in a world apart." "changing yet changeiess, the Niie flows through their lives its seasonal rise and fall, the stately measures of eternity." "As plane and barge make rendezvous in the northern stretches of the Sudd phiiippe and his companions change transport for a further journey." "By swamp vehicle they penetrate the domain of one of the remaining tribal monarchs still formally recognized by the Sudanese government." "Like the river itself, the king of the Shiiooks, too, is a symbol of eternity." "Here posing for phiiippe with his family with his possessions and his prized herds of cattle with Sudanese representatives and his private guard he is a living link between past and future." "The visible assurance of tribal continuity." "Because Shiiook legend still celebrates an earlier French visitor captain Jean-Baptiste Marchand, who led an historic march across Africa more than eight decades ago, philippe and the team are honored with a ceremonial display." "Later in audience with the king, philippe is shown faded photographs of the king's ancestor, with captain Marchand whose small party, well supplied with champagne briefly challenged British power on the Niie." "i would like to know from His Majesty what part of the Niie does his kingdom cover?" "Referred to the council, philippe's question is answered by a spokesman saying the king's authority extends over a wide area of the Sudd." "But for the king of the Shiiooks and the river gods of the Niie eternity is coming to an end." "A new god has come to rule." "Across the land, a great rotary excavating machine is cutting the Jongiei canal a 200-miie trench which will provide a year-round waterway between north and south, drain vast areas of the Sudd and carry the marshland waters to irrigation tracks downstream." "But as phiiippe learns from a project engineer many of the canal's uses and its impact on people, animals, plants and weather are still largely undefined." "Asked if the canal will allow cheap irrigation by gravity flow engineer Voroncoff replies that the canal level will not be high enough for such a system." "instead, a large network of pumping stations will be required for water distribution." ""What provisions," phiiippe asks, "have been made for wild animals to cross the canal?"" "There has been talk, says Voroncoff about providing for the seasonal movements of both people and animals but nothing has been done." "Such matters are not covered in the contract." "in the quiet dusk, philippe's questions about future consequences remain unanswered." "Leaving the straight trench through which the meandering White Niie will soon bypass much of the Sudd phiiippe and his companions again head northward in the catalina." "Now at last, the team encounters the Biue Nile the great sister tributary flowing down from the mountains of ethiopia." "Bearing in summer flood the huge burden of fertile silt it joins the White Niie north of Khartoum." "Here a vast tract of land has been reclaimed irrigated by water impounded behind the nearby Jabai ai Awiiyã' Dam." "in Jabai ai Awiiyã"s reservoir a mass of green vegetation spreads across its surface." "But the countermeasures against it present new difficulties and dangers according to Sudanese expert Dr. Hasim Ai Maghrabi." "How much do they spray like that every year?" "Weii, exactly a thousand tons of the 2,4-D, which is a lot of herbicide." "2,4-D?" "y eah, 2-dichiorophenoXyacetic acid." "And that's...." "That's a defoliant." "y es." "What is the effect on the environment?" "Weii, there's a general decrease in the productivity of the White Niie an immense decrease, in fact." "it takes what, fish don't grow or...?" "Weii, larval fish die." "Species like the tilapia which makes a nest on the ground, does not find the possibility to do so because the layer of the decomposed water hyacinth is several feet sometimes." "Whatever the risks fishermen still cast their nets into the waters they always have trusted." "Offered for human consumption, last link in the food chain several fish are bought by philippe for later analysis." "Wouid this type be a good indicator?" "Not the best, but it could be a good indicator." "it could be good?" "y eah." "Led by the Niie, the cousteau team moves on." "For the first time, far from its upland beginnings and the languid expanses of the Sudd the river enters the great North African desert." "Henceforth, the green-edged stream its vegetation often barely a few yards wide will be the only source of life for the peoples of Northern Sudan and all of egypt." "in a basin between desert ridges, the river becomes the inland sea called Lake Nuba in Sudan, Lake Nasser in egypt stretching more than 300 miles southward from Aswãn High Dam." "One of the engineering marvels of the modern world, a haif-miie thick at its base 364 feet high, more than two miles long the Aswãn High Dam dwarfs even the pyramids." "A joint Soviet-egyptian effort formally begun by premier Khrushchev and president Nasser in 1 960, the High Dam has abruptly altered the long history of the Niie." "Though lower dams have been built since 1 902 men for the first time could boast that they now commanded the river." "in the tremendous rush of water through its spillway they saw the promise of food for their multiplying populations hopes described to phiiippe by chairman Akhmadi Raouff of the Niie Valley Authority." "The High Dam is constructed for two" " Three purposes:" "To afford water for the river control for affecting all of the floods in the years in the continuous years and for generating about ten billion kilowatt hour of electricity." "And to have" " To save the water" "As a storage of water to be safe during all the coming years." "carried to distant pumping stations much of the High Dam's 1 0-biiiion kilowatt capacity is used to lift water into the network of irrigation canals." "From these, in turn, the flow is drawn into smaller channels spreading through greening fields of cotton and maize." "Across the desert, new ditches draw a geometry of hope." "Month by month, year by year, the growing grid reciaims new land." "Through vast projects such as Kom Ombo the High Dam is expected to increase arable land in egypt by one-third, more than two million acres." "But the blessings of the High Dam are sometimes deceptive." "Aiready along some of the irrigation channels and fields a sinister white crust has begun to appear." "Team members Aibert Faico and Dominique Sumian learn the white residue is salt." "Once it was washed away by the yearly flood, now prevented by the High Dam." "present irrigation methods often simply leach the salt to the surface of desert soil threatening to return the reclaimed fields to wasteland." "So about the salinity." "We treat the land by making open drains and tight drainage in the oid areas." "And in the new areas we make our projects." "The irrigation projects and the drainage projects must go parallel to each other in the same time so the land will not suffer in the future for" " By the salinity." "Often in former years, the floods brought disaster." "But as they receded, they left a gift a thin new layer of silt, that at the rate of three inches per century has sometimes reached a depth of 50 feet." "Today, farmers themselves sometimes transport the slit to add to their sandy fields." "This is 1 1 -years-oid land now." "i have been working this part land, you can see the change of soil what happened to the soil, even very deep." "y ou'ii find it completely different." "This is the type of soil we got after 1 1 years of work." "And this is the origin of the land itself." "y ou can see the difference. if i just put this on that you'ii see the difference of soil what happened during 1 1 years of very hard work." "Swept down from the mountain highlands often as much as 40 million tons in a year the waterborne clouds of silt spread over the valley of the Niie enriching and renewing the land." "in the central Sudan, near Khartoum the floods still brings its precious burden of fertile loam feeding trees and crops in the yearly rite but trapped behind the Aswãn High Dam no siit now reaches the fields of egypt." "And for fertility of the land the mud, the sediment was very important." "y es. y es." "And how is that being replaced?" "We are" " We increase the the quantity of fertilizers." "That's aii. it is used also in the States..." "...and in the" " Aii the..." "y eah." "...aii the countries." "Aii other countries like..." "..." "German and the- y eah, but the purchase or manufacturing of fertilizers costs money." "y es, we have aiready" "We are fortunate because we have a very big factory in Aswãn, Kima." "y es, we visited it." "To compensate for the loss of the slit much of the dam's electric power is utilized in the production of vast quantities of fertilizer." "This, in turn, must be shipped by barge from Aswãn along the river which once carried it to the farmers' fields without expense." "Nor does the factory's output of 300,000 tons per year begin to match the need of five times that amount for the upper Niie alone." "But not all the dam's effects can be measured in coin or human hunger." "Today, a great circular cofferdam marks payment of a debt to the past." "The famed monuments and temples of phiiae have been resurrected and saved from oblivion." "Stone by stone, at a safe height above the lake artisans are restoring the courts and colonnades of egyptian and Roman rule the serried steps, or Niiometer by which the ancients measured the rise and fall of the river." "South from phiiae an unparalleled international effort already had rescued one of the supreme treasures of Western civilization's beginnings the massive rock temples of Abu Simbel here visited by philippe and Sumian." "Today, history is their only kingdom." "y et, serene and imperial seemingly immune to defeat or disbelief the great figures stare across the centuries." "Mute reminders, they helped make us what we are." "Tokens of our brief history they too might have vanished beneath the lake." "instead, around an arching buttress a great mound of stone was built to provide a new and secure site for the colossal statues and their adjoining sanctuaries." "The ancients believed the Niie came from the land of the ghosts." "Today, the ghosts lie here." "The waters cover not only uncounted monuments and tombs and traces of prehistory in the river's desert corridor they have drowned the fields and habitations of people still living most of them now exiles, a thousand miles away." "Near the site of Wãdi Haifã'  a former town commissioner talks of the one-time river port and desert center." "This was old Haifã' ." "y es." "This is the mosque at the village." "it was beautiful." "y es, it is a beautiful site." "This is near the garden of the Niie Hotei." "it was a very fine city." "One of the oldest cities in the Sudan." "The population in it was about 52,000." "52,000?" "y es." "And now?" "Now it is about 8000." "Aii the people were emigrated to the New Haifã' ." "eastern of the Sudan." "The water rise up about 50 meters." "Fifty meters?" "y es, 50 meters." "y et, from this harsh land many have refused exile." "Stubborn and baffled, stranded almost within site of their former doorways they cling in mute loyalty to a place suddenly become strange and alien." "Today they are trying to begin again." "Born to a desert without rain, they are becoming fishermen." "A new fishing industry is being developed at various settlements around the 300-miie lake." "To Jean-paui cornu, a member of the cousteau team Sudanese official Muhammad Aii tells of joint efforts to help the readjustment of Wãdi Haifã"s displaced survivors." "The population here, some of them who refuse to leave the place and they stayed here in their place and they have nowhere to do, but to fish." "But unfortunately, they have not the experience to fish because at that time there was no fish here, and most of them, many of them the majority, they don't know how to fish." "So when we came here to utilize their fishery resources in the place we have to train the people and we have also to encourage them to come to the lake and fish and make money out of this." "And for this, we contact our friends in the chinese-- people's Republic of china, to assist." "The people's Republic of china." "y es. y ou see Mr. Ku is with me here." "They're offering us assistance and a certain loan or agreement between the Sudanese government and the chinese government." "So you are the expert here, and you are training the Sudanese people?" "And how many fish do you expect to fish over there when this industry will be completed?" "When the factory is completed we plan to produce 5 tons of fish every day." "Marked by the monument to Soviet aid the Aswãn High Dam remains the pivotal structure in egypt central to the nation's hopes." "Forty-five hundred years ago, Aswãn itself was a frontier trading center and fortress guarding egypt's southern approaches." "Today it is again a frontier town egypt's face to the future." "Source of more power than egypt can yet readily use peopied by a growing percentage of skilled technicians site of new factories and weii-suppiied marketplaces Aswãn city is a symbol of prosperous modernity." "it is here that a score of agencies are trying to assemble a coherent plan for the balanced development of Lake Nasser's commercial and recreational resources." "Stiii a nation of farmers most of egypt's peasants still wrest a living from the soil with the tools and patient methods invented at the beginning of Western civilization." "Not far from the High Dam's turbines the peasant still works his counter-weighted shadoof irrigating less than an acre between sunrise and sunset guiding the great Niie to his little fields with a hoe." "With the saqia, or water wheel turned by a circular cog drawn by oxen a farmer can sometimes water almost five acres in a day." "As the team fiies north past the High Dam and the first of the river cataracts even Aswãn seems an inconsequential fact at the edge of a limitless waste." "Bareiy 4 percent of egypt is arable land." "Aii the rest is desert." "y et, here too, in this wilderness in this frozen geologic tumult of scarps and canyons and ancient riverbeds other men have left their marks the tombs and tracings of forgotten habitations now locked in silence." "At Deir ai Bahari, entombed in the mountain wall the presence of Queen Hatshepsut now presides over desert space." "But the fertile fields on the river's edge are reserved for the living." "Aiong the Niie, like jewels on a necklace remain the dazzling fragments of the civilization the river alone made possible:" "Kom Ombo." "luxor." "Karnak." "The Step pyramid of Saqqãrah, designed by imhotep civilization's first known genius." "close by, the rhomboidai pyramid companion." "The celebrated pyramids of Giza." "Mykerino, chephren, cheops." "But here, the life of the Niie is swiftly changing." "The distance between past and present abruptly widened." "Amid the commercial traffic, the familial patterns of ordinary life go on." "But monuments now are hidden amid the clutter of urban sprawl." "The dry, clear air that for so long has preserved ancient pyramids and temples is clouded now with the smoke of factories and refineries." "An industrial haze hangs over the habitations of people unable to escape their own pollution." "The river no longer carries its cargo of silt." "instead, it now bears an increasing burden of urban waste." "Northward from cairo's spreading megaiopoiis lies the Niie's ultimate gift the great fertile delta that stretches in a widening triangle to the Mediterranean coast, more than 1 00 miles away." "Here, at last, the Niie divides into the Damietta branch eastward the Rosetta to the west." "Beiow the catalina lie 8500 square miles of the richest land in egypt." "every foot of it transported ton by ton century by century, by the Niie, from the mountain highlands of her southern neighbors." "egypt exists on the river's gift of alien soil." "proceeding now by the expedition's vans phiiippe and his companions drive through a countryside dotted with prosperous towns and villages." "Through the greening fields of cotton, fruit, maize, and other crops raised not only for use in egypt but to be sold for export." "everywhere, like the arteries and veins of a living body a great network of canals, ditches and minor tributaries carry water to the fields." "Near the sea, the delta receives seven inches rainfall each year." "At cairo, less than one." "Aii else needed by the crops must be provided from the river's siackening flow." "But for all these demands on the river, there is a price." "Aiong the natural causeways that sometimes provide the only slim barrier between the great inland fresh water lakes and the sea phiiippe and his companions pass ominous bits of wreckage isolated lighthouses or phinarets damaged structures." "Once, the river's yearly burden of sediment steadily extended the delta's shores." "Today, the Niie's vastly diminished flow brings no siit at all." "With phiiippe, an egyptian technician describes the consequences at the Rosetta outlet." "But this is broken." "The road has disappeared." "y es, the road has disappeared." "From 1 974, last time i came here the road extends to this phinaret." "And now, the road is finished." "So the erosion is already visible." "y es." "it's already destroying some installations." "y es." "y ou can find these columns, electrical columns." "Look, the water is already passing into the Niie there." "y es." "Since 1 974 was the last time you were here?" "y es." "And the road was intact." "y es." "The road finished now." "So in four years the sea has gained about 20 meters." "Aii this area." "Aii this area is gained by sea." "At the Damietta branch too the same process is being repeated." "Here, a guide reports, the sea also threatens to breach the narrow coastal barrier invade the lakes, and overrun the most fertile land in egypt." "What is the rate of erosion here?" "The rate of erosion?" "y eah." "About one meter per year." "One meter per year." "From 1 964 to now." "y eah." "Sampies of water and bottom sediment taken from the lake by Sumian for later analysis confirm its increasing brackishness." "Sometimes flowing in to replace the depleted underground water tables the salt water is infiltrating the lakes." "Step by step, the sea is beginning to win the battle against the land." "Across the causeway on the seaward side a lone fisherman fights a losing battle." "Once, the fish were taken from these waters in the thousands of tons." "Today, they are gone." "in alexandria at the institute for coastal Research director Kasham and his associate, Dr. Akram, explain why." "By the construction of the Aswãn High Dam and the cessation of the Niie flood the sardine fishery in these areas, in front of the delta has completely disappeared because the sea, the Niie flood with its nutrients, salts and fresh water and this forms a good blooming of plankton as a feeding" " A food base for fishes to aggregate and collect." "We used to have an average yearly discharge from the Niie River which is estimated at 42 kilometers cubed per year, see." "So now we have only, at average, from 3 to 4 kilometers cubed." "That's" "That's one-tenth." "Less than a tenth." "Aimost, yes." "So actually, 90 percent of the discharge has been prevented from reaching the Mediterranean." "That's not the High Dam." "That's" "That's various irrigation." "That's due to the High Dam, and the water of the Niie is now going to the land for irrigation, of course." "From hidden beginnings, for countless millennia the Niie has made its unceasing journey from the mountains to the sea." "Astonished by flood in the cloudless days of summer men in the egyptian desert thanked Hapi, the Niie god." "They did not know that the river's life and theirs came from rains and springs nearly 4000 miles away." "Across the Niie's path lay the isolated habitats of animals and men." "Sanctuaries filled with the creatures of some biblical bestiary landscapes of innocent cultures, black or Bedouin unaware that they were already doomed." "Now the Niie has crossed a new threshold, moved from past to present into a changing world filled with the sounds of engines and traffic." "Abruptiy, a dam barricades the river's flow." "Beiow it, a thousand outlets draw water from the current bleeding the great artery to irrigate the growing crops." "The river god has been dismissed." "in one of the most massive attempts ever made to reorder nature man has thrown dam after dam across the Niie." "Naj' Hammadi" "Roseires." "Sennar." "Jabai ai Awiiyã' ." "Asy~Ut," "Damietta." "Rosetta." "Aswãn High Dam, most powerful of all." "We have seized the power but the consequences are yet to be counted." "Like the High Dam, these too are announcements of power." "Symbois of the civilization that lined the Niie with temples that developed hierogiyphs founded libraries, tracked the movement of stars invented gods, provided many of the furnishings of our minds." "Like the river, our beginnings, too, often lie beyond our sight." "y et they are gone, leaving behind only these scattered relics of a search for immortality reminders that kings also die and power can be no more than illusion." "Mute warnings that technology and all its wonders cannot save us from the folly of our multiplying numbers." "perhaps we have mastered the river." "We have yet to master ourselves." "it is written of the Niie, "i am all the past, the present and the future."" "Today, little of the great river enters the sea where the fisherman casts still waiting for the wave that will fill his net."