An account of the course of the Blue Nile from the Ethiopian Highlands, through the Sudan and Egupt to the sea. The book contains an historical narrative which starts in the eighteenth century and ends in 1869. The period was dominated by four men: James Bruce, the Scot who journeyed to the supposed source of the Blue Nile, and stayed in warring Ethiopia; Napoleon who, needing military glory to further his political ambitions, led a brilliantly conceived expedition to Egypt; Mohammed Ali, the Turkish viceroy, who sent his son to conquer the Sudan in a ruthless quest for gold and slaves; and Emporer Theodore of Ethiopia, a tyrant who held British subjects captive.