European Stars And Stripes (Newspaper) - August 24, 1985, Darmstadt, Hesse                                Salt continued from Page 13 behind the salts and minerals that Runoff has leached out of the Mountain when evaporation cant keep up with precipitation and the Lake record rainfall in september 1982 triggered the basins current then Winter brought unprecedented snows As great As 835 inches to the nearby Wasatch and a sudden May heat wave sent torrents of Snow melt Down to the the next even More Snow we thought the first Winter was Uncein Hundred year says Salt Lake meteorologist Mark then nature turned around and did the same thing youd never predict never expect even More worrisome for great Basin residents is the Little publicized vulnerability to deep under the an unusually hot zone in earths upper Mantle causes the Brittle top crust to stretch about four inches a Century and to fracture in a North South during the past 15 million years in the great enormous blocks formed in the process have tilted along the creating valleys like that filled by the great Salt utahs major seismic the Wasatch runs along the Wasatch where 80 percent of utans live and where an earthquake As great As on the Richter scale has occurred every 400 to one consultant said there was an 80 percent Chance of a major quake along the fault within the next 50 even a moderate earthquake while the Basin is so waterlogged would undoubtedly would trigger National geographic society historic it 1873 0 july 1984 flood stage Oqual Mountain the great Salt lakes Rise to its july 1984 flood Levels is attributed to wet Winters and Cloudy sum which inhibit the historic High of feet in 1873 inspired mormon Leader Brigham Young to propose spilling the Lake into the the Northwest Arm of the Lake is divided from the Southern half by the Southern Pacific rail Road it deprives the Northwest Arm of the Lake making it while the South Ern flush with fresh waterfront other is becoming a Nile Steamer five barges lashed to an old life along the be conversation and water pipe1 National geographic National geographic Road Trews have had to raise highways As much As 7 feet to escape the rising Waters of great Salt 14 the stars and stripes National geographic the destination the source of the deep in the heart of where the longest and most mysterious River on Earth begins As a the journey of More than Miles leads South from the Mediterranean through Fertile fierce seemingly endless and hostile lands to a Small Spring on a windswept Hill in by and Cross country author photographer Robert Caputo spent eight months rediscovering the River in All its incarnations three of the Best things in life along the Nile Are and the water Egypt is the gift of the ancient no other country is so dependent on a single although four fifths of the River lies South of its today 96 percent of Egypt 48 million people Are crowded into the Fertile Nile Delta and on Only 3 percent of the country Egypt very soil was born in the Niles annual which used to Deposit As much As 20 million tons of Silt on the Fields along the Africa largest and its 10 million people spill out across the Nile to the great which Rise up Between the River and the setting Egypt is growing by people a in Caputo some Are forced to live on rooftops others find a wretched Home in one of the cites in the Valley to the the thin Blue ribbon of the Nile unwinds for Miles Over Brown soil and Green some a few Yards others As Broad As an Iowa nearly 600 Miles upriver from Cairo stands the greatest Public work undertaken in Egypt since the pyramids Elsadd the High dam at the harnessing of the Nile in 1964 broke the devastating age old Cycle of flood and it has saved Egypt from the terrible drought and famine that now grip Ethiopia and some of its the High dam created one of the worlds largest Man made Lake it stretches some 300 Miles and holds the equivalent of two years of Nile the dams Power and water have transformed like All the generations of my family Back to the i used to Plant my crops and never know if i would a Village elder told now there is no fear we know there will be and we can get three crops a year instead of the dam has been a it traps the valuable poisons soil with High and is blamed for erosion downstream and a coastal ghost the egyptian Nile has become one Long irrigation Lake Nasser drowned the villages of egyptian who were moved to the desert to live in rows of cinder lock we left our fathers and grandfathers in the ground and they Are one nubian lamented to aboard a Lake Caputo headed for the wide unfettered Nile in troubled he wound up sipping Sweet Tea in a Circle of Camel we drive along the Trail of forty Days to one of them camels Are Worth a lot in Egypt because the egyptians like to eat on sudanese Caputo steered his specially equipped vehicle into one of the worlds fiercest there Are no roads there just tire tracks across the a sandstorm can wipe them when he got stuck in the Caputo dug trenches in front of the wheels and Laid out aluminium Sand ladders for he slept in a Carton tent out of Range of snakes and he bathed with a Jerry can Shower rigged to the As he passed through sudanese nubian children the Only words of English they if he refused their welcoming offer of Tea they would scamper off and come Back with a bag of dried such generosity is moving in a land where people barely have enough for he at an Oasis after More than Miles of the Blue and White Niles known in arabic poetry As the longest kiss in the White Nile is the Mother flowing from the Victoria and Albert lakes and near the the great swamp that blocked Nile traffic and exploration until the Caputo visited with the Hilluk whose divine King must be even a missing tooth is reason enough to dethrone at the Uganda Caputo my stomach Felt my hands sweated As memories of Idi amins Uganda flooded into my in Caputo had been arrested at the Border by the dictators this he was stopped at an army Drunken soldiers with automatic rifles swarmed Over the spilling my baggage onto the anything they could easily slip into a pocket was fair Caputo pyramids of Giza Ca great pyramids halted v late Zaire at Oertl Kagera River Rwanda sources of the Nile Lake Tanzania Tanganyika National geographic society a half mile Down the it happened conditions Are worse now than under Caputo then murder and torture were systematic today the killing is he in the Nile is a network of and lakes mingling together to create their mighty its source is reckoned to be the River that feeds More water into Lake Victoria than any other the on a windswept Hill in Southern Caputo reached the end of his journey and the beginning of the Nile a tiny trickle of water issued from the Siphon hoses take Nile water from canals to irrigate sugarcane crops in August 1985 the stars and stripes National geographic Page 15