Page:Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile - In the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772, and 1773 volume 1.djvu/210

106 in the collection of hieroglyphics, I wonder that, being in the neighbourhood, as we are, of Lycopolis, we never see a wolf as an hieroglyphic; and nothing, indeed, but what has some affinity to water; yet the wolf is upon all the medals, from which I apprehend that the worship of the wolf was but a modern superstition.

stands on the edge of a small, but fruitful plain; the wheat was thirteen inches high, now at Christmas; their harvest is in the end of March. The valley is not above five miles wide, from mountain to mountain. Here we first saw the Doom-tree in great profusion growing among the palms, from which it scarcely is distinguishable at a distance. It is the Palma Thebaica Cuciofera. Its stone is like that of a peach covered with a black bitter pulp, which resembles a walnut over ripe.

before we came to Dendera we saw the first crocodile, and afterwards hundreds, lying upon every island, like large flocks of cattle, yet the inhabitants of Dendera drive their beasts of every kind into the river, and they stand there for hours. The girls and women too, that come to fetch water in jars, stand up to their knees in the water for a considerable time; and if we guess by what happens, their danger is full as little as their fear, for none of them, that ever I heard of, had been bit by a crocodile. However, if the Denderites were as keen and expert hunters of Crocodiles, as some historians tell us they were formerly, there is surely no part in the Nile where they would have better sport than here, immediately before their own city.