Page:Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile - In the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772, and 1773 volume 2.djvu/485

 set out from Cairo on the 10th of June of the year 1698, and, fifteen days after, they came to Monsalout, a considerable town upon the banks of the Nile, the rendezvous of the caravan being at Ibnah, half a league above Monsalout. Here they tarried for above three months, waiting the coming of the merchants from the neighbouring towns.

the afternoon of the 24th of September, they advanced above a league and a half distance, and took up their lodging at Elcantara, or the bridge, on the eastern bank of the Nile. A large calish, or cut, from the Nile stretches here to the east, and, at that season, was full of water, the inundation being at its height,

believes he was on the eastern banks of the Nile; but this is a mistake. Siout and Monsalout, the cities he speaks of, are both on the western banks of that river; nor had the caravan anything to do with the eastern banks, when their course was for many days to the west, and to the southward of west. Nor was the bridge he passed a bridge over the Nile. There are no bridges upon that river from the Mediterranean till we arrive at the second cataract near the lake Tzana in Abyssinia. The amphitheatre and ruins he speaks of are the remains of the ancient city Ifiu; and what he took for the Nile was a calish from the river to supply that city with water.

2d of October the caravan set out in earnest, and passed, as he fays, into a frightful desert of sand, having first gone, through a narrow passage, which he does not