From the heart of Africa to the Mediterranean Sea,
runs the world's longest river.
Since the Egyptians first settled along
its banks men have dreamt of discovering the place where the Nile is born.
But for centuries the river kept its secrets close.
The obsession grew
and by the mid 19th century some were prepared
to risk their lives to be the first to discover the source of the Nile.
Over a period of 30 years the Nile finally yielded.
It demanded a terrible price.
Many died or suffered horribly.
One man had the resolve to finally piece
together the puzzle of the Nile.
He was Henry Morton Stanley.
Doctor Livingstone sync Yes.
Meeting Livingstone changed my life.
He was a remarkable man -
he inspired in me the determination to finish the work that he had begun.
From as long ago as 5000 BC,
when the first nomads settled along the banks of the Nile,
people realised that it was an extraordinary river.
Not only did it offer a constant flow of water in the middle of the Sahara
but it also provided an annual flood,
which brought with it millions of tonnes of rich black soil.
Year after year, the fields lining the banks of the river
Nile were replenished with water and nutrients.
It's now known that this sediment-laden water
came from the Ethiopian mountains down
a huge tributary called the Blue Nile.
This water, with its heavy load of volcanic soil,
thundered down the Blue Nile gorge into Sudan
and then on through the desert to Egypt.
This miraculous flood of water
and silt was the powerhouse of the ancient Egyptian civilization.
But there is an even greater miracle.
Because here is a vast river
that flows through 1500 miles of scorching desert yet never runs dry.
What could be capable of generating this much water?
When at last the source of the Nile was found it provided the answer
but one that no one could have foreseen.
Now, I'm an old man, surrounded by the comforts of home.
They've even made me a knight of the realm.
But do people understand, I wonder, the price we all paid,
those of us who were drawn into this quest.
I was sixteen years old in 1857,
and at last free of that terrible workhouse.
That same year Burton and Speke were setting out for Africa.
This is Central Africa, gentlemen,
as we know it now,
and as you can see the most interesting feature is this lake
- uniamesi - sometimes called Tanganyika.
800 miles long and 300 wide.
Estimated distance from the coast 900 miles.
And that, gentlemen is about all we do know.
I fear we're no wiser than the Ancient Egyptians.
We think, we think that this lake has sufficient altitude to be the source.
So there it is.
The Nile is somewhere within this area of 500 miles.
And so it began.
The Royal Geographical Society was determined
that an Englishman would be the first to find the source.
They enlisted the most intrepid explorer of the day,
Captain Richard Burton.
He chose as his companion, Captain John Speke.
The jungle seems infinite.
The atmosphere has corroded everything and food is at a minimum.
Every morning dawns upon me with a fresh load of cares and troubles
and every evening reminds me as it closes in that another
and a miserable morrow is to follow.
Their route took them first through thick jungle,
then into the dry heat of the open savannah.
Rather than follow the Nile upstream,
which was reported to be impossible,
Burton took the most direct route and struck inland from the East African Coast.
Burton was the leader of the expedition,
Speke found it hard to take a subordinate role.
Their relationship became increasingly strained
and by the end they were barely on speaking terms.
It didn't help that the journey proved more arduous than they had expected,
and both men were continually plagued by disease.
If one of us is lost the other
might survive to carry home the results of the exploration.
I have undertaken the journey with the resolve to do or die.
Burton fell prey to malaria,
and Speke was almost blind with trachoma.
But after eight terrible months they reached their goal,
the shores of Lake Tanganyika.
Arab slave traders told them of a river that flowed north from the lake
and they went in search of it.
If this river proved to be the Nile,
the prize was theirs.
But their provisions ran low and the porters mutinied -
they were forced to give up.
The Nile continued to keep its secrets.
Although they had found Lake Tanganyika
they had not been able to prove that it was the source of the Nile.
While they rested in the small town of Tabora,
some Arab traders told Speke about another great lake,
an even bigger one to the north,
and only 2 weeks march away.
Burton felt that finding this new lake was outside the scope of his orders
and showed no interest in it.
But Speke saw a chance for himself.
Despite Burton's lack of enthusiasm
he set off to the north with a handful of porters.
He was about to make the discovery that would guarantee his place in history.
The vast expanse of the pale-blue waters burst suddenly upon my gaze...
I no longer felt any doubt that the lake
at my feet gave birth to that river,
the source of which has been the subject of so much speculation,
and the object of so many explorers.
Speke was convinced that here was the headwater that fed the Nile.
This lake's worthy of the Nile.
On my enquiring about the lake's length,
the man faced to the north, and began nodding his head to it;
at the same time he kept throwing forward his hand,
to indicate something immeasurable; and added, that nobody knew,
but he thought it probably extended to the end of the world.
Speke could see this new lake was large
but he had no idea that it covered an area of 26,500 square miles.
More like an inland sea,
this is the largest lake in Africa.
Water evaporates from the surface,
falls on the surrounding mountains, and then drains back into the lake.
This continual circulation of water
means little is lost to the equatorial sun -
the lake holds water like a vast reservoir.
I claim this lake for England and the crown,
and I name her Victoria
after our gracious sovereign.
Speke returned to England ahead of the invalided Burton.
Though he had promised to wait,
he revealed his great discovery to the world
and claimed the glory for himself.
Now, if anyone would like to answer any questions.
Sir
Though his news was greeted with excitement,
his lack of detailed information generated some doubts
at the Royal Geographical Society.
...regarding the lake you named Victoria.
You have not claimed to actually have seen the Nile.
Of course, those who explore the world
from their comfortable armchairs are always the first to carp.
I'm very happy to announce
that the Council have asked Captain Speke
to return within the year to Central Africa
in command of a new expedition,
whose object is to inspect the actual exit of the Nile from Lake Victoria.
The focus now switched from Lake Tanganyika to Lake Victoria.
Speke was joined by a young army captain,
James Grant.
Grant idolised Speke,
and was prepared to follow him to the ends of the earth.
They navigated from the south of Lake Victoria
around the western side in search of an outlet.
The quantity of mosquitoes on the borders of the lake is perfectly marvellous;
the bushes, and everything growing there,
are literally covered with them.
As I walked along it's shores, disturbing the vegetation,
they rose in clouds,
and kept tapping, in dozens at a time,
against my hands and face, in the most disagreeable manner.
The lake has an insect population
unrivalled anywhere on Earth.
An extraordinary event is triggered during the rains by the new moon.
Insect larvae ascend from the lake bottom to the surface to emerge as flies.
On their way up they have to run the gauntlet of shoals of greedy fish.
Those that make it past the fish emerge at the surface,
struggle free of their larval shells and rise up into the air.
There they join others to form vast breeding swarms.
In turn, the swarms merge to form immense clouds comprising billions of flies.
Drawn by the flies, terns migrate here from Europe and gather in their thousands.
Unpredictable winds often blow the flies ashore.
Although Speke and his party found the flies irritating,
they don't bite - they only emerge to mate.
The party approached the northern end of Lake Victoria
where Speke expected to find the outflow from the lake
the beginning of the Nile.
By this time Grant was limping badly from an ulcerated leg,
but Speke wouldn't wait.
He pressed on leaving Grant,
bitterly disappointed that he had been abandoned so near their goal.
On 28th July 1862,
Speke reached the point where water flowed out of Lake Victoria
as a boiling rapid.
The expedition had now performed its functions...
and as I had foretold,
the lake is the great source of the holy river...
As far as Speke was concerned,
this was the birthplace of the Nile.
And he named it Ripon Falls.
But in his haste to get there he had made a mistake -
by leaving Grant behind,
he had no witness with him
who could silence any critics back home.
Speke rejoined Grant
and they set off downstream,
planning to follow his river to Egypt,
and prove conclusively that it was the Nile.
But tribal wars blocked their route
and so they were forced to leave the river
and travel overland to the town of Gondokoro.
This diversion was critical
because it meant that Speke could still not prove
that the river flowing out of Lake Victoria was the river Nile.
By an extraordinary co-incidence
they met with another pair of explorers in Gondokoro -
a most unlikely couple to chance on in the heart of Africa.
Samuel Baker had rescued Florence Von Saas
from white slave traders and had made her his wife.
They too were in search of the source of the Nile,
but they were doing it the traditional way
by doggedly travelling upstream.
For a year they explored various tributaries of the Nile
and finally reached the vast papyrus swamp known as the Sudd.
This had been an effective barrier to explorers through the ages.
But the Bakers had been lucky,
somehow they had navigated the labyrinth of marshy channels in only 40 days.
Nevertheless, in Bakers words, they had braved
'malaria, marshes, mosquitoes and misery' in these swamps.
In Gondokoro,
Baker learnt that Speke had apparently discovered
the source of the Nile at Lake Victoria.
Well of course Baker was bitterly disappointed,
but he was reluctant to give up.
Then he heard about a third large lake still to be explored.
So off he went.
He hoped that a river as large as the Nile
could have more than one source
and that there was still a chance for a share of the glory.
Once forced to travel cross-country,
the Bakers soon found the going hard.
Florence collapsed with fever,
their baggage animals died and their food supplies failed.
For ten months they suffered terribly.
Then, in March 1864 they finally found it
the new lake.
The glory of our prize burst suddenly upon me!
There, like a sea of quicksilver,
lay the grand expanse of water
a boundless horizon on the south and south-west, glittering,
in the sun...
it is impossible to describe the triumph of that moment...
My wife who had followed me
so devotedly stood by my side pale and exhausted.
Baker named the lake "Albert" after Queen Victoria's late consort.
Impressed by it's size,
it took little to convince him that this lake,
along with Lake Victoria, was ajoint source for the Nile.
Now surely he would share Speke's glory.
Anxious to return to England that season,
they followed the shoreline north
expecting to sail down the river Nile, back to Gondokoro.
But something was troubling Baker
it was the relationship between the two lakes, Victoria and Albert.
Which had the higher elevation?
Speke's figures suggested it was Victoria.
So when Baker found a river flowing into Lake Albert,
although I'm sure he wanted to go home,
he knew he had to follow the river upstream to find the answer.
Less than twenty miles upstream
from Lake Albert the Bakers had their answer.
The elevation readings now made sense
and Baker surmised that Lake Victoria flowed down this river,
Speke's Nile, into Lake Albert.
Although Baker was mesmerised by the waterfall, something else caught his eye.
In the river at the bottom of the falls
there was a concentration of surprisingly large crocodiles.
I never saw such an extraordinary show of crocodiles.
They lay like logs of timber close together,
and upon one bank we counted twenty seven.
Every basking place was crowded in a similar manner.
The Bakers' struggle to explore the Nile had left them bone weary.
They were out of provisions
and they were suffering from malaria and other fevers
It's little surprise that they had no stomach for further exploration.
...if death were to be the price,
at all events we were at the goal
and we both looked upon death rather as a pleasure,
as affording rest
there would be no more suffering no fever
no long journey before us,
the only wish was to lay down the burden.
Far from home, in the grip of fever,
the African night can play tricks on the mind.
A mournful cry...
...just a bush baby.
These harmless little creatures
are doing no more than advertising their territories.
In the stillness of the night they can be heard for over half a mile.
The Bakers pushed on to the place
where Speke had been forced to leave the river on his way downstream
establishing once and for all that
Lake Victoria and Lake Albert were linked
by the river that Speke was convinced was the Nile.
Like Speke
the Bakers were held up by the whims of a local king and tribal wars.
It took them a further six months to reach the safety of Gondokoro -
their struggle home turning into an epic
on the scale of their outward journey.
The Bakers had confirmed
that a river flowed out of Lake Victoria to Lake Albert.
And it became generally accepted that this was the Nile.
But there were others who thought differently.
Lake Tanganyika had still not been ruled out
as a possible source and Dr David Livingstone,
who supported this theory, was asked to resolve the issue.
I was thirty years old in 1871
when my newspaper sent me to Africa.
I suppose I had something of a reputation
for bringing home stories that people wanted to read.
And this story was one of the biggest.
Five years earlier, Livingstone had set off for Lake Tanganyika,
but almost nothing had been heard of him since.
He was lost somewhere in the dark heart of that frightening continent
and most people presumed him dead.
But after 236 of the hardest days
I had ever known I found him.
Dr Livingstone I presume. Yes
I thank God Doctor that I have been permitted to see you.
I feel thankful that I am here to welcome you.
He was the most extraordinary human being
that I ever had the privilege to know
and it's no exaggeration to say that the man changed my life.
He was still convinced
that Lake Tanganyika would prove to be the source of the Nile.
If the lake's outflow headed north into Lake Albert,
his theory might yet prove to be correct.
I put my considerable resources at his disposal,
and together we explored the northern end of Lake Tanganyika.
But Livingstone's hopes were dashed
when we discovered that the river
there flowed into not out of the lake.
On that trip we never did find the lake's outflow.
I had to return home, the world was waiting for news.
You must forgive me if I have not told you before,
you have done what few men could do,
far better than some great travellers I've known.
I'm very grateful.
If I gave you this,
and I've nothing else in the world to give,
would you consider it as a memento of our leave taking?
Bombay - Prepare them...
kwende, kwende...
Stanley never saw him again.
Livingstone died 14 months later.
His loyal African servants brought his body back to Zanzibar
and the doctor made his final journey home.
Stanley was not yet an explorer like Burton, Speke or the Bakers -
he had arrived in Africa
a newspaper man looking for a story.
But there is no doubt that
Livingstone had a huge impact on his life.
He had taught me
that suffering produces perseverance and perseverance character.
Standing by Livingstone's coffin I had realised
that it was my duty to continue the work he had begun.
The extent of Lake Victoria was still unknown
and Lake Albert, according to Baker
seemed to be equally vast.
Sound the advance.
Stanley had no choice
but to circumnavigate and map all three lakes:
Victoria, Albert and Tanganyika.
Only then could he finally settle which was the main feeder for the Nile.
Stanley bypassed the scientific institutions
and persuaded his newspapers to fund this huge enterprise.
He set off once more from Zanzibar in 1874,
a general at the head of an army of porters.
People who have no conception
what such an expedition entails
have sometimes called me ruthless, brutal even.
But to me there's only one judgement
would I accomplish what I set out to do?
He circumnavigated the vast Lake Victoria
and was able to confirm that Speke's Ripon Falls
was indeed the major outlet.
Speke had now the full glory of having discovered
the largest inland sea on the continent of Africa.
With Lake Victoria finally settled,
Stanley set off towards Lake Albert
but his route too was blocked by warring tribes.
He turned south to Lake Tanganyika
to clear up its role in the Nile's story.
It was good to know that
I was completing Dr Livingstone's work.
After charting Lake Tanganyika,
I followed its outflow west,
but it proved not to be the Nile.
It was a river that fed the Congo,
and for 999 days I followed that great river to its mouth in west Africa.
The question of the Nile was still not yet fully understood.
Ten years later
Stanley found himself heading back towards the Nile.
Only this time he approached from the west,
through the dense tropical forests of Central Africa.
...if the lightning severs the crown of a proud tree,
and lets in the sunlight,
then the race for air and light causes a multitude of baby trees to rush upward.
They crush and strangle one another,
until the whole is one impervious bush.
Untracked jungle is pitiless terrain to move through.
I began with eight hundred men,
but our casualty rate was high, and many deserted.
I think I came as close as I have ever come
to knowing despair on that terrible journey.
...not every person has the gift of finding his way in a forest.
Within 200 yards
any man would be hard pressed to find his way back
to the place where he started.
Sometimes we would cover only 400 yards in an hour.
Nevertheless we pressed on.
Now and then troops of monkeys
bounded with prodigious leaps through the branches,
others swung by long tails
a hundred feet above our heads, and with marvellous agility
they hurled their tiny bodies
through the air across yawning chasms.
Then they rested for an instant to take a last look at our line
before burying themselves out of sight in the leaves.
Then we hit the marshes.
...thick scum-face quagmires green with duckweed
into which we sank knee-deep,
and the stench from the fetid slough was sickening.
The forest could never sustain the needs of so many men
and the people who lived in its depths were suspicious of us,
and often would not trade, taking us for Arab slavers.
Most of our food, certainly our staple of rice,
we had to carry with us.
Meat was in short supply.
Hunting hippo, crocodiles, buffalo and elephant proved unsuccessful...
Even though an animal may have been only a few feet off on the other side of a bush,
it was impossible to obtain a view of it through the impervious mass of vegetation.
Finally, they emerged from the green Hell of the forest
near the western edge of Lake Albert.
Albert was now known to be much smaller than the Bakers
had optimistically drawn on their maps.
But Stanley discovered yet another lake,
a little further south,
which he named Edward
after the Prince of Wales.
It was clear to me now
that there was a family of lakes
and waterways that must feed the Nile.
There was no single source.
These lakes created one enormous reservoir system for the Nile.
It's no wonder that its such a great river.
Of course, there remained one final mystery.
Where was the water coming from to fill all these lakes?
I saw a peculiar shaped cloud of a most beautiful silver colour,
which assumed the proportions and appearance of a vast mountain
covered with snow...
it dawned on me that this must be the Ruwenzori...
...I had discovered the long lost Mountains of the Moon...
The Mountains of the Moon, so called for thousands of years,
sit between the humid forests of the Congo basin
and the monsoon lands of East Africa.
Ruwenzori, the local name,
means 'rainmaker'
and for much of the year they're shrouded in dense mist.
No wonder so few white men had ever seen them.
The altitude of the mountains attracts clouds from both east and west...
and this steady supply of water,
trickles down on both sides of the range into
Edward and Albert,
and a third lake - George
feeding the headwaters of the Nile.
But these mountains are more than just an interceptor of rain.
They contain the final secret of
the Nile's steady flow and strength.
This world of ice, moss, forest and bog,
acts as a reservoir,
slowly releasing the rain.
At the base of the mountains lie enchanted forests.
Mosses, liverworts, ferns and lichens
carpet the ground and envelop the trees,
helping to regulate the release of water.
The Ruwenzori's glaciers drip feed the bogs which,
together with the forests,
feed mountain streams, rivers
and the great African lakes.
Frozen at some 16,500ft above sea level,
it is the Ruwenzori's glaciers that provide a steady supply for the lakes,
that power the Nile on it's
4000 mile journey to Egypt.
His African days over,
Stanley settled in England.
He was elected a Member of Parliament
and in 1899 was knighted.
We had all sought a definitive answer,
a bubbling spring or a single lake
where we could plant a flag and say 'here is the source of the great Nile!'
But the truth, as it often is,
was more complicated.
I, and all those who'd gone before me,
Burton, Speke, the Bakers, Livingstone,
we had all done as much as was humanly possible
with the resources available to us.
We would have to look to future generations for the final answer.
It would take another 100 years of scientific research and discovery,
boosted by huge technological advances,
before the origins of the Nile were fully understood.
Between 10 and 15 million years ago movements
in the Earth's tectonic plates caused a vast plateau to rise in East Africa.
It stretched some 600 miles across and to nearly one mile high.
At this stage there were no large, well-defined lakes in the region
and certainly no great river flowing north.
As the plateau rose,
fractures developed along its flanks -
these fractures in the Earth's surface
form what we now call the African Rift Valley.
About 12 million years ago,
the Mountains of the Moon began to rise
as a block near the western arm of the rift
and by eight million years ago
the maturing rift valleys began to collect water.
The lakes of George, Edward
and Albert developed,
but the water never broke out of these lakes into a permanent major river.
Then, less than one million years ago
the centre of the vast plateau sagged a little.
This slight depression began to pond with water and developed into
what we now call Lake Victoria.
At the end of the last glacial period,
when huge quantities of water were released from the retreating ice,
a very wet phase in Earth's climate followed.
Over thousands of years the lakes filled up,
and then about 12,500 years ago,
an event occurred which was to change the fate of mankind forever -
the water in Lake Victoria spilled north.
The Nile was born.
This new river found a route west to Lake Albert.
From there, with a huge boost from the waters
now pouring out of lakes George, Edward and Albert,
the young Nile burst north.
This vigorous river cut a route over hundreds of miles
before entering the flatlands of Sudan.
Here, within this vast marsh,
the spirit of the river was tamed and steadied.
It emerged into the northern deserts
strong and reliable.
Finally it was joined by its sister,
the sediment-filled Blue Nile.
The two Niles, now one,
brought the gifts of water and nutrients into the desert of Egypt.
The stage was set for the birth of a great civilization...
It began just 7000 years later.