Page:Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile - In the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772, and 1773 volume 1.djvu/250

142 wind failing, we were obliged to stop in a very poor, desolate, and dangerous part of the Nile, called Jibbel el Silfelly, where a boom, or chain, was drawn across the river, to hinder, as is supposed, the Nubian boats from committing piratical practices in Egypt lower down the stream. The stones on both sides, to which the chain was fixed, are very visible; but I imagine that it was for fiscal rather than for warlike purposes, for Syene being garrisoned, there is no possibility of boats passing from Nubia by that city into Egypt. There is indeed another purpose to which it might be designed; to prevent war upon the Nile between any two states.

know from Juvenal, who lived some time at Syene, that there was a tribe in that neighbourhood called Ombi, who had violent contentions with the people of Dendera about the crocodile; it is remarkable these two parties were Anthropophagi so late as Juvenal's time, yet no historian speaks of this extraordinary fact, which cannot be called in question, as he was an eye-witness and resided at Syene.

these two nations who were at war had above a hundred miles of neutral territory between them, and therefore they could never meet except on the Nile. But either one or the other possessing this chain, could hinder his adversary from coming nearer him. As the chain is in the hermonthic nome, as well as the capital of the Ombi, I suppose this chain to be the barrier of this