Page:Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile - In the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772, and 1773 volume 1.djvu/551

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CHAP. IV.

Some Account of the Trade Winds and Monsoons — Application of this to the Voyage to Ophir and Tarshish.

is a matter of real affliction, which shews the vanity of all human attainments, that the preceding pages have been employed in describing, and, as it were, drawing from oblivion, the history of those very nations that first conveyed to the world, not the elements of literature only, but all sorts of learning, arts, and sciences in their full detail and perfection. We see that these had taken deep root, and were not easily extirpated. The first great and fatal blow they received was from the destruction of Thebes, and its monarchy, by the first invasion of the Shepherds under Salatis, which shook them to the very foundation. The next was in the conquest of the Thebaid under Sabaco and his Shepherds. The third was when the empire of Lower Egypt (I do not think of the Thebaid) was transferred to Memphis, and that city taken, as writers say, by the Shepherds of Abaris only, or of the Delta, though it is scarcely probable, that, in so favourite a cause as the destruction of cities, the whole Shepherds did not lend their assistance. Rh