Page:Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile - In the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772, and 1773 volume 1.djvu/173

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IV.

UR wind was fair and fresh, rather a little on our beam; when, in great spirits, we hoisted our main and fore-sails, leaving the point of Metrahenny, where our reader may think we have too long detained him. We saw the Pyramids of Saccara still S.W. of us; several villages on both sides of the river, but very poor and miserable; part of the ground on the east side had been overflowed, yet was not sown; a proof of the oppression and distress the husbandman suffers in the neighbourhood of Cairo, by the avarice and disagreement of the different officers of that motely incomprehensible government.

sailing about two miles, we saw three men fishing in a very extraordinary manner and situation. They were on a raft of palm branches, supported on a float of clay jars, made fast together. The form was like an Isosceles triangle, or face of a Pyramid; two men, each provided with a casting net, stood at the two corners, and threw their net into the stream together; the third stood at the apex of the triangle, or third corner, which was foremost, and threw his net the moment the other two drew theirs out