The story of the Nile, from the Mountains of the Moon to the Mediterranean. The tale starts with Richard Burton and John Hanning Speke setting out to find the sources of the Nile. It continues with Baker of the Nile and his wife struggling with malaria, and of the famous greeting between Stanley and Livingstone. The book examines the results of their discoveries: the building of the Suez canal; the Khedive Ismail's appointment of Gordon as Governor-General of Sudan; and the story of the last days of Khartoum. The book concludes with Kitchener's military success at Omdurman which made Queen Victoria the ruler of the huge area from Alexandria to the highlands of Uganda and which resulted in the Nile being, for the first tiem, an open highway from Central Africa to the sea.