Page:Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile - In the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772, and 1773 volume 3.djvu/648

 524 TRAVELS TO DISCOVER

efpecially huge, long-haired baboons, which we frequently met walking upright. Through thefe high and difficult mountains we have only narrow paths, like thofe of fheep, made by the goats, or the wild beafls we are fpeaking of, which, after we had walked on them for a long fpace, land- ed us frequently at the edge of fomc valley, or precipice, and forced us to go back again to fearch for a new road. From towards Zeegam, to the weftward, and from the plain where the river winds fo much, is the only eafy accefs to the fountains of the Nile, and they that afcend to them by this way will not think even that approach too eafy.

It remains only for me to fay, that neither have thejefuits, (Paez his, brethren in the million, and his contemporaries) made any geographical ufe of this difcovery, either hi lon- gitude or latitude ; nor have the hiftorians of his fociety, who have followed afterwards, with all the information and documents before them, thought proper even to quote his travels ; it will not be eafy, from the authority of a man like Athanafius Kircher, writing at Rome, to fupport the reality of fuch a difcovery, not to be found in the genuine writings of Peter Paez himielf. With fuch a voyage, if it had been real, there Ihould have b^cn publifhed at leaft an itinerary, and mod of the jefuits were capable enough to have made a rough obfervation of longitude and latitude, in the coun- try where they refided, for near one hundred years, Add to this, no obfervation appears from any Jeiiiit of the idola- try or pagan worfhip, which prevailed near the fource of the Nile, and this would feem to have been their immediate province.

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