Page:Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile - In the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772, and 1773 volume 1.djvu/314

206 about three miles from the shore, of an oval form, rising in the middle. It seems to me to be of granite; and is called, in the language of the country, Jibbel Siberget, which has been translated the Mountain of Emeralds. Siberget, however, is a word in the language of the Shepherds, who, I doubt, never in their lives saw an emerald; and though the Arabic translation is Jibbel Zumrud, and that word has been transferred to the emerald, a very fine stone, oftener seen since the discovery of the new world, yet I very much doubt, that either Siberget or Zumrud ever meant Emerald in old times. My reason is this, that we found, both here and in the Continent, splinters, and pieces of green pellucid chrystaline substance; yet, though green, they were veiny, clouded, and not at all so hard as rock-crystal; a mineral production certainly, but a little harder than glass, and this, I apprehend, was what the Shepherds, or people of Beja, called Siberget, the Latins Smaragdus, and the Moors Zumrud.

The 16th, at day-break in the morning, I took the Arab of Cosseir with me, who knew the place. We landed on a point perfectly desert; at first, sandy like Cosseir, afterwards, where the soil was fixed, producing some few plants of rue or absinthium. We advanced above three miles farther in a perfectly desert country, with only a few acacia-trees scattered here and there, and came to the foot of the mountains. I asked my guide the name of that place; he laid it was Saiel. They are never at a loss for a name, and those who do not understand the language, always believe them. This would have been the case in the present conjuncture. He knew not the name of the place, and perhaps it had no name, but he called it Saiel, which signifies a male acacia-tree; merely because he saw an acacia growing there; and, with