Abstract

Biography of a River

The article provides information on the book "The Nile: The Life-Story of a River," Emil Ludwig. In spite of a few lush passages, to be expected from a man who has made his fame by popular biographies, in spite of certain strongly individual judgment which will find objectors, this is a magnificent book. In the main Ludwig writes a prose that is vivid, forceful, and packed with information. He begins with the use of the White Nile in the Mountains of the Moon near Lake Victoria, Central Africa, a beautiful inland sea larger than Switzerland, and of the Blue Nile near Lake Tana, Ethiopia. From its earliest history the wealth of the Nile has been seized by the few, who have oppressed the many by their manifold exactions. Ludwig shows Uganda as an earthly paradise before the whites first came eighty years ago to enslave the natives by offering them wages.