Page:Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile - In the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772, and 1773 volume 1.djvu/50

xxxiv gant remains here, but in this I was disappointed; I found nothing remarkable but the baths of very warm water without the town; in these there was a number of fish, above four inches in length, not unlike gudgeons. Upon trying the heat by the thermometer, I remember to have been much surprised that they could have existed, or even not been boiled, by continuing long in the heat of this medium. As I marked the degrees with a pencil while I was myself naked in the water, the leaf was wetted accidentally, so that I missed the precise degree I meant to have recorded, and do not pretend to supply it from memory. The bath is at the head of the fountain, and the stream runs off to a considerable distance. I think there were about five or six dozen of these fish in the pool. I was told likewise, that they went down into the stream to a certain distance in the day, and returned to the pool, or warmest and deepest water, at night.

Feriana I proceeded S.E. to Gafsa, the ancient Capsa, and thence to Tozer, formerly Tisurus. I then turned nearly N.E. and entered a large lake of water called the Lake of Marks, because in the passage of it there is a row of large trunks of palm-trees set up to guide travellers in the road which crosses it. Doctor Shaw has settled very distinctly the geography of this place, and those about it. It is the Palus Tritonidis, as he justly observes; this was the most barren and unpleasant part of my journey