Page:Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile - In the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772, and 1773 volume 1.djvu/489

Rh then east, taking the form of the Arabian Gulf; after which, it continues southward all along the Indian Ocean, in the same manner as it did in the beginning all along, the Red Sea, that is parallel to the coast.

tradition says, that, terrified with the late dreadful event the flood, still recent in their minds, and apprehensive of being again involved in a similar calamity, they chose for their habitation caves in the sides of these mountains, rather than trust themselves again on the plain. It is more than probable, that, soon after their arrival, meeting here with the tropical rains, which, for duration, still exceed the days that occasioned the flood, and observing, that going through Atbara, that part of Nubia between the Nile and Astaboras, afterwards called Meroë, from a dry climate at first, they had after fallen in with rains, and as those rains increased in proportion to their advancing southward, they chose to stop at the first mountains, where the country was fertile and pleasant, rather than proceed farther at the risk of involving themselves, perhaps in a land of floods, that might prove as fatal to their posterity as that of Noah had been to their ancestors.

is a conjecture from probability, only mentioned for illustration, for the motives that guided them cannot certainly be known; but it is an undoubted fact, that here the Cushites, with unparalleled industry, and with instruments utterly unknown to us, formed for themselves commodious, yet wonderful habitations in the heart of mountains of granite and marble, which remain entire in great numbers to this day, and promise to do so till the consummation of all things. This original kind of dwellings soon ex-

VOL. I.