Page:An Essay on the Life and Genius of Samuel Johnson.djvu/27

 in each year, as they have thousands of cattle; so that, to express how rich a man is, they tell you, he bathes so many times.

"Of the river Nile, which has furnished so much controversy, we have a full and clear description. It is called, by the natives,, the Father of Water. It rises in , a province of the kingdom of , the most fertile and agreeable part of the Abyssinian dominions. On the eastern side of the country, on the declivity of a mountain, whose descent is so easy, that it seems a beautiful plain, is that source of the Nile, which has been sought after, at so much expense and labour. This spring, or rather these two springs, are two holes, each about two feet diameter, a stone's cast distant from each other. One of them is about five feet and a half in depth. Lobo was not able to sink his plummet lower, perhaps, because it was stopped by roots, the whole place being full of trees. A line of ten feet did not reach the bottom of the other. These springs are supposed, by the Abyssins, to be the vents of a great subterraneous lake. At a small distance