"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."