Page:Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile - In the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772, and 1773 volume 3.djvu/155

Rh manufactures of coarse cotton cloth; and here too the best parchment is made of goats skins, which is the ordinary employment of the monks. Every thing seemed later at Axum, and near it, than at Adowa; the teff was standing yet green.

On the 19th of January, by a meridian altitude of the sun, and a mean of several altitudes of stars by night, I found the latitude of Axum to be 14° 6′ 36″ north.

reader will have observed, that I have taken great pains in correcting the geography of this country, and illustrating the accounts given us by travellers, as well ancient as modern, and reconciling them to each other. There are, however, in a very late publication, what I must suppose to be errors, at least they are absolutely unintelligible to me, whether they are to be placed to the account of Jerome Lobo, the original, or to Dr Johnson the translator, or to the bookseller, is what I am not able to say. But as the book itself is ushered in by a very warm and particular recommendation of so celebrated an author as Dr Johnson, and as I have in the course of this work spoke very contemptibly of that Jesuit, I must, in my own vindication, make some observations upon the geography of this book, which, introduced into the world by such authority, might else bring the little we know of this part of Africa into confusion, from which its maps are as yet very far from being cleared.

is said to mean Axum, to be a city in Africa, capital of the kingdom of Tigrè Mahon in Abyssinia. Now,