Page:Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile - In the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772, and 1773 volume 3.djvu/646

 622 TRAVELS TO DISCOVER

It is not cafy to conceive what fpecies of information Paez intends to convey to us by the obfervation he makes lower, " That the water, which found way at the foot of the mountain, did not flow at the top of it." It would have been very lingular if it had ; and I fully believe that a mountain voiding the water at its top, when it had free ac- cefs to run out at its bottom, would have been one of the raoft curious things the two Jefuits could ever have feen in any voyage. But what mountain is it he is fpeaking of? he has never named any one, but has faid the Nile was fi- tuated in the higheft part of a plain. I cannot think he means by this that the higheft part of a plain is a moun- tain ; if he does, it is a fpecies of defcription which would need an interpreter. He fays again, the mountain is full of water, and trembles ; and that there is a village below the top of the mountain, on the mountain itfelf. This I ne- ver faw ; they mult have cold and llippery quarters in that mountain, or whatever it is ; and if he means the moun- tain of Geelh, there is not a village within a quarter a mile of it. The village of Geelh is in the middle of a high clilF, dcicending into the plain of Allioa. The bottom of that cliff or plain is 30c feet, as I have already faid, below the bale of the mountain of Geelh, and the place where the fountains rife.

Paez next fays, that it is three miles from that village of Geelh to the fountains of the Nile. Now, as my quadrant was placed in my tent, on the brink of the cliff of Geelh, it wa$ necefiary for me to meafure thatdiftance ; and by al- lowing for it to reduce my obfervations to the exact fpot where the fources rofe, I did accordingly with a chain 4 rneafure