Page:Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile - In the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772, and 1773 volume 3.djvu/640

 6i6 TRAVELS TO DISCOVER

Athanasius Kircher, a Jefuit,well known for his exten- sive learning and voluminous writings, and ftill more for the rafhnefs with which he advances the mofl improbable facts in natural hiftory, is the man that firft publifhed an account of the fountains of the Nile, and, as he fays, from this journal left by Peter Paez.

I must, however, here ohferve, that no relation of this kind was to be found in three copies of Peter Paez's hiftory, to which 1 had accefs when in Italy, on my return home. One of thefe copies I faw at Milan, and, by the intereft of friends, had an opportunity of perufmg it at my leifure. The other two were at Bologna and Rome. I ran through them rapidly, attending only to the place where the descrip- tion ought to have been, and where I did not find it ; but having copied the iirft and laft page of the Milan manu- fcript, and comparing them with thefe two laft mentioned, I found that all the three were, word for word, the fame, and none of them contained one fyllable of the difcovery of the fource.

However this be, I do not think it is right for me to pro- nounce thus much, unlefs I bring collateral proofs to nrengthen my opinion, and to fhew that no fuch excurfion •was ever pretended to have been made by that miflionary, in any of his works, unlefs that which palled through the hand of Kircher.

Alphonso Mendes came into AbyiTmia about a year af- ter Paez's death. New and delireable as that difcovery mull have been tohimfelf, to the pope, king of Spain, and all his •great patrons in Portugal and Italy, though he wrote the

hiftory