Page:Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile - In the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772, and 1773 volume 3.djvu/587

 THE SOURCE OF THE NILE. 563

I may add jeffamin (called Leham) which becomes a large tree; but all the reft of the birds or flowers may be con- fidered as liable to the general obfervation, that the flowers are deftitute of odour, .and the birds of fong.

After pairing the Affar, and feveral villages belonging to Goutto, our courfe being S. E. we had, for the firft time, a diftincl view of the high mountain of Geefh, the long-wiihed- for end of our dangerous and troublefome journey. Under this mountain are the fountains of the Nile; it bore from us S. E. by S. about thirty miles, as near as we could conjecture, in a flraight line, without counting the deviations or crook- ednefs of the road.

Ever fince we had paiTed the Affar we had been defend- ing gently through very uneven ground, covered thick with trees, and torn up by the gullies and courfes of torrents. At two o'clock in the afternoon of the fecond of November we came to the banks of the Nile ; the paffage is very diffi- cult and dangerous, the bottom" being full of holes made by considerable fprings, light finking fand, and, at every little diftance, large rocky {tones; the eaftern fide was muddy and full of pits, the ground of clay: the Nile here is about 260 feet broad, and very rapid; its depth about four feet in the middle of the river, and the fides not above two. Its banks arc of a very gentle, cafy defcent ; the weftern fide is chief- ly ornamented with high trees of the falix, or willow tribe, growing flraight, without joints or- knots, and bearing long pointed pods full of a kind of cotton. This tree is called, in their language, Ha; the ufe they have for it is to make charcoal for the compofition of gunpowder ; but on the eaftern fide, the banks, to a confiderable diftance from the

v. iii. 4 B 2 river,